Customer Reviews

Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Penguin Classics)

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I stumbled on this book while I was a long-haired undergrad in college many years ago, and I selected it (probably because of the intriguing, rebellious-sounding title) to write a term paper on for a class I was taking in biography. I have nursed a special attraction for this work of literary art ever since those days, and currently own it in several different editions, including this one from Penguin Classics.

While his writing is probably tough-going for the typical modern day reader, De Quincey was truly a master stylist of English prose (one of the greatest who ever lived) and the writing here is lushly impeccable -- beautiful and poetic. Contemporary readers, do not be afraid of this kind of book! Sure, it might be difficult to read (it's certainly not "dummied down" like so much modern day stuff), but if you don't try, I think you'll be missing out on a great adventure. After all, consider, Shakespeare and the Bible are difficult to read too!

In any event, these writings of De Quincey's, quite autobiographical, tell of the marvelous stimulus to creativity and pleasure that opium can provide (at least, in the initial phases) to those who become emeshed in her dark empire, as well as the chilling aftermath -- the pathetic fear and trembling that inevitably follow from addiction. At his peak usage, I have read that De Quincey was doing around 8,000 drops a day (approximately 80 teaspoons). As one of the other reviewers here correctly noted, tincture of opium (I think that it actually came as a liquid blend of opium, drinking alcohol, and cinnamon) was sold over-the-counter as medicine in neighborhood apothecary shops (drug stores and pharmacies) in those days.

The "Confessions" date from 1822, while a complementary sequel, "Suspiria de Profundis", dates from 1845. De Qunicey, who relapsed three times after trying to "clean himself up" and "go straight", passed away in December 1859, right about the time that Baudelaire (who also died an opium addict -- in 1867) was completing his own book (it was in direct response to De Quincey's) about the dreamy debacheries of hashish and opium, entitled "Artificial Paradises".

This is English that one can luxuriate in and enjoy for it's precision and beauty. There are few if any English compositions that better convey subjective feeling than this book. You feel as though you are inside the author's mind as he writes so exactly and sympathetically.

As a recounting of a man's struggle with addiction it is a compelling story.

I first heard of this book because the great Italian horror film maker, Dario Argento, was inspired by the writings of De Quincey, specifically this book. This book contains De Quincey's most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and 2 unofficial sequels, Suspiria de Profundis (Suspiria is the title of Dario's most famous film), and The English Mail Coach. Suspiria has an essay entitled Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow in which De Quincey talks about the 3 ladies (some have said the three mothers as well). They are the lady of tears, sighs, and darkness. Dario's 2 films, Suspiria and Inferno, are about these mothers/ladies. He just completed the third film. This is the reason I purchased the book.

De Quincey's prose is definitely difficult to read (it's not an easy, mindless self help book), but it is definitely worth reading, and it's absolutely fascinating as Thomas accounts for his opium habit, and the ways it affected him and his work. Opium was staggeringly popular during De Quincey's time, and it wasn't very difficult to get. De Quincey published the confessions twice. The original, shorter version is the one you have here, and it's the only one still available. The longer version (which I have read to some degree) is good too, but it feels padded and is rather uneven. Most scholars have agreed that the shorter version is better. I wish they had included the longer version so we could compare ourselves, but I'm happy this edition is out.

It's a classic of course, but not very readable as pure entertainment.Probably the parts about his opium addiction, which are pages 44-88, are of most interest today. To be frank, most of the rest is hard going unless you're adept at reading early nineteenth century English, perhaps an English or history major. De Quincey was a rambling and digressive writer, even by nineteenth century standards. There is some fascination in the interlocking lives of this circle of writers of the romantic movement (the "Lake Poets";Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, and their contemporaries Keats, Shelley and Byron) especially if you've read Richard Holmes's wonderful biographies.
You can get the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" alone cheaper in the Dover edition. This Penguin Classics edition contained other writings which are of limited appeal, but the notes and the introduction and appendix by Barry Mulligan make it more understandable and provide useful historical background about opium use.
Opium was freely available over the counter in England until 1858, so this could be read as a warning about what might happen with legalization. It has always been a puzzle that De Quincey and Coleridge described vivid dreams and hallucinations as part of their experience, whereas opioids used by addicts today are not usually hallucinogenic. De Quincey was aware that his experiences were atypical and offered his own explanations ("one whose talk is of oxen will dream of oxen").
I was intrigued his account of the relief of his withdrawal symptoms by the use of valerian (prescribed by Bell of Bell's palsy).

De Quincey's reputation seems to be, at the moment, in sort of a dip, which is a shame because as other reviewers have pointed out, this is a wonderful book. Even his current biographer (Robert Morrison) has taken some unwarranted heat for his troubles, as for some reason the reviewer's of his biography see De Quincey as a drug addict who just happened to write and not a as he actually was, a brilliant writer who happened to be an addict. His reputation is probably not being helped by bandying about praise from such nonentities as William S. Burroughs and the likes either. Melville loved this book, calling it "Most wondrous," and I feel he's on the mark. De Quincey wasn't an easy man to get along with, but what artist was? This book is funny, witty, learned (bad word in today's society), and the prose is incredible. The book is one gigantic digression. Next to Rousseau's Confessions (which so astonished me I read it through twice, back to back), two of my favorite books in this literary genre. Read it on a slow winter evening, savor the prose of a wonderful book...

After circling this book for years, I finally read it this week. And it knocked my socks off. DeQuincey writes like an angel. Even in the less structured passages (his descriptions of his opium dreams are somewhat disjointed) his writing is so astonishingly brilliant that the reader is swept along.

In her introduction to the Penguin Classic edition, Alethea Hayter describes DeQuincey's prose as "highly charged, close-textured, every word and syllable choice enriched with music and imagery", "prose (that) works like a spell, powerfully moving even apart from the meaning of the words."

I can't improve on that characterization.

In 1803, an 18 year old TDQ entered Oxford and was immediately miserable. In the spring of 1804,he began taking opium, an addiction which was to last him all his life. He later met Wordsworth and fellow opium addict Coleridge. He was poor, married with 6 children and seemingly a failure. But in 1821 came the astonishing success of CEOE. The money from this did not last long. Later he wrote a sequel, Suspiria de Profundis. On the first page of CEOE, TDQ claimed to be introducing a new form of autobiography to his readers, what we might today call the respectable confession. There was precious little in the book about opium. Mostly, it was an autobiography emphasizing his childhood experiences, carrying his life into his mid-thirties. In deference to the long established English tradition of presenting an autobiography as a lesson in morals or ethics, he closes the book with a stern warning to future opium addicts: don't do what I did. Despite this warning, a careful reading shows that he was pandering for the sensation-seeking reader. He promises to reveal the secret joys and horrors of his addiction, hints at the extent of addiction within the highest circles of blue blood nobility, and claims that only he has the `true' story of opium addiction. In short, CEOE is long on sizzle but short on steak.

I was interested in reading this book for several years, finally just finished it. I did not like it at all. I guess I was expecting a bit more to take out of it then I did. The most interesting part of it was the one section where he becomes tormented with these vivid dreams from his addiction. Aside from that, it was self-involved and all over the place. Things happen in his life and you have no idea what they are and when they happen. He was married and he had children? I get that is part of the addiction process but there are so many loose ends that on top of the writing style it becomes incredibly hard to follow. The whole book is pretty much him rambling on and on and on. I get that he was unhappy in his early years but he sounds like a self indulged whiner. I finished it feeling underwhelmed and bored. I know it is a classic but not for everybody.

De Quincey takes us towards a descent into an addiction of spirit and body in this incomparable work of autobiographical prose. In the great tradition of Augustine and Rousseau, De Quincey's confession is an elaborate unfolding of interiority itself. Beginning with his brilliant youth in classics and moving towards astonishing descriptions of his early poverty, this text is haunted with a sense of longing and despair. De Quincey's archaic prose is truly a miracle of architectural description; his command of hypotaxis is arguably without equal in the period. Do not miss this strange and wonderful text.

First of all dont read the introduction as this will ruin your reading on the original, base work- "The Confessions..". Thomas De Quincy is almost poetic in his prose, as of/like the english poets he reveres. Just when I would grow tired of the work and would set it down for a time I would come back to it to find some beautiful, finely crafted passage.
If you are reading this as I was for knowledge about drug addiction I also recommend highly, Aleister Crowleyy's- "Diary of a Drug Fiend."