Conscience Of Life Eaters

This vintage book comprises 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'; an autobiographical account of Thomas De Quincey's opium addiction and the effect that it had on his life. This text was the first major book that De Quincey published, and one that made him famous in a very short period of time. De Quincey's Confessions assumed an authoritative influence on the public, as well as scientific opinion of opium for several generations. It went through almost innumerable editions and revisions despite the fact that he was generally criticised for putting too much emphasis on the positive aspects of opium intoxication. Thomas Penson De Quincey (1785 – 1859) was an English essayist who was most renowned for writing this book. We are republishing this vintage work now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

A timeless memoir of drug addiction from one of the leading intellectuals of the Victorian age At first, Thomas De Quincey found opium to be a harmless pleasure. A twenty-year-old intellectual living in nineteenth-century London, De Quincey took laudanum sparingly, spacing out his doses so their effect would not be dulled. But after years of casual use, intense stomach pains caused him to rely on the drug more and more, until he was taking opium daily, and living in a world divided between hallucinatory bliss and aching physical torment. De Quincey’s account of his addiction made him a celebrity. His rhapsodies of hallucination influenced generations of authors, from Poe and Baudelaire to Jorge Luis Borges, and warned countless readers of the dangers of drug dependency.