The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Description

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is an account of the early life and opium addiction of Thomas De Quincey, in prose which is by turns witty, conversational, and nightmarish. ‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth’ offers both a small masterpiece of Shakespearian interpretation and a provocative statement of De Quincey’s personal aesthetic of contrast and counterpoint. Suspiria de Profundis blends autobiography and philosophical speculation into a series of dazzling prose-poems which explore the mysteries of time, memory, and suffering. ‘The English Mail-Coach’ develops a richly apocalyptic vision which sets nineteenth-century England’s political and imperial grandeur against the suffering and loss of innocence which it entails. This selection presents De Quincey’s major works in their original uncut and unrevised versions, which in some cases have not been available for many years.