Customer Reviews

Opium and the Romantic Imagination: Addiction and Creativity in De Quincey, Coleridge, Baudelaire and Others

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Filled with great detail and an eyebrow-raising theory or two -- did Coleridge really create homemade heroin? -- Hayter's well-researched and entertaining book is a scholarly look at drug use and its role in the creation of Romantic literature. By looking at the settings, theory, and practice of drug use through the 17th-19th centuries, Hayter provides historical context to an otherwise loosely-grouped list of writers: the careers of DeQuincey, Poe, and Baudelaire are examined in detail as well as lesser lights such as Francis Thompson and Wilkie Collins. Published in 1968 when interest in the culture of drugs, its uses and effects were at a peak (and when the very words "drug culture" meant different things to different people) this book is certainly an artifact of the period, but Hayter's research is thorough enough to remain an excellent source of material, as well as debate, on the value of drug use in art.

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Hayter's book, written in the sixties, opens up a new field of criticism, a new non-prudery about the material conditions of artistic production. It is extremely well-researched, finely balanced, carefully experimental, and, overall, a disciplined and well-written book. Important for anyone interested in Romantic studies; essential for anyone who still believes in the old trope of "creative drug use".