Kindle
$0.00
Available instantly
Audiobook
$0.00
for membership
Hardcover
from $35.82
Paperback
$13.08
$13.08 with 13 percent savings
List Price: $15.00

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
FREE International Returns
No Import Fees Deposit & $11.85 Shipping to France Details

Shipping & Fee Details

Price $13.08
AmazonGlobal Shipping $11.85
Estimated Import Fees Deposit $0.00
Total $24.93

Delivery Wednesday, August 14. Order within 23 hrs 34 mins
Or fastest delivery Monday, August 12
In Stock
$$13.08 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$13.08
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
30-day refund/replacement
30-day refund/replacement
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
30-day refund/replacement
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Thomas de Quincey
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater Paperback – April 29, 2003

by Thomas De Quincey (Author), Barry Milligan (Editor, Introduction)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 500 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$13.08","priceAmount":13.08,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"13","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"08","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"4H4Wx0JjrumMpW92wgS%2B4Lw1YVfMxRlnnkcwymq0b4gVpaHSsOwcMF8jkTskKYt0nfu8qwWvRJEA4LZkwrDQnNh2C4VT6LMjQr%2FNU5vNeO%2Bf%2B8Ox8sYCDjFltpRDHA%2FQiOo1yRTht6Y%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The first literary addiction memoir, featuring the autobiographical Suspiria de Profundis, the inspiration for the 2018 horror film Suspiria, starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton and directed by Luca Guadagnino

In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London—and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey—under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings seamlessly weaves the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination. First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs, and anticipated psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.

This edition is based on the original serial version of 1821, and reproduces two “sequels”: Suspiria de Profundis (1845) and The English Mail-Coach (1849). It also includes a critical introduction discussing the romantic figure of the addict and the tradition of confessional literature, and an appendix on opium in the nineteenth century.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    April 29, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.1 x 0.8 x 7.79 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0140439013
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0140439014
  8. Lexile measure
    1280L
  9. See all details
Next slide of product details

Frequently bought together

Confessions of an English Opium Eater
This item: Confessions of an English Opium Eater
$13.08
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
$15.49
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
spCSRF_Control
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mind-blowingly modern . . . [De Quincey’s] poetic depictions of the wild hallucinations that punctuated his years with the drug transfixed his contemporaries. To us, though, his story is revelatory mostly for its eerie familiarity.” —The New York Times Book Review

“De Quincey’s rather majestic, classically learned and singular style inspires every page of his writing. . . . The self-controlled equanimity of this classic volume is little short of miraculous.” —The Guardian

About the Author

Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) studied at Oxford, where he failed to earn his degree but discovered opium. He later met Coleridge, Southey and the Wordsworths. From 1828 until his death, he lived in Edinburgh and made his living from journalism. 

Barry Milligan is a professor of English at Wright State University and author of Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Revised edition (April 29, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140439013
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140439014
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1280L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.79 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 500 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Thomas de Quincey

Thomas de Quincey

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
500 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book very interesting and easy to read. They also appreciate the beautiful prose style and the insightful view of the mindset. However, some readers find the writing style difficult and the content irrelevant.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more
ReadabilityWriting styleContent
14 customers mention "Readability"14 positive0 negative

Customers find the book interesting, quick, and a great Kindle edition. They also say it's not a long book, but one of unique insight and impact.

"...Suspiria de Profundis is… one of the most important works printed in our language that deals with grief, in my opinion." Read more

"...This book is interesting, but I suggest that you skim some of the early sections, which describe the author's early life in much detail, and pay..." Read more

"Interesting work, in a beautiful prose style...." Read more

"...There was an unexpected end as well. Not a long book, but one of unique insight and impact." Read more

13 customers mention "Writing style"9 positive4 negative

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some mention it's beautiful, while others say it'll be difficult to read.

"De Quincey has to be one of greatest writers of English prose, ever. I have trouble even conceiving how someone could write more beautiful sentences...." Read more

"...The style of the Confessions is erudite, seasoned with Greek terms, references to Ancient literature and other domains...." Read more

"I was disappointed with this book. It is not easy reading. I am not even going to finish it...." Read more

"Beautifully written the prose contrast with the harsh source material. A rebel teen subjects himself to the uttermost poverty, hunger and sickness...." Read more

6 customers mention "Content"4 positive2 negative

Customers are mixed about the content. Some find the book has unique insight and impact, while others say it's irrelevant and not useful for research on opium addiction.

"...background information on his life, which I found entertaining and informative and thought really served the author's purpose of allowing you to get..." Read more

"...from a few interesting historical insights, this is a largely forgettable bore of a read." Read more

"...Not a long book, but one of unique insight and impact." Read more

"...by Barry Mulligan make it more understandable and provide useful historical background about opium use...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

T
5.0 out of 5 stars Incomprehensibly beautiful writing
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2024
Verified Purchase
De Quincey has to be one of greatest writers of English prose, ever. I have trouble even conceiving how someone could write more beautiful sentences. Suspiria de Profundis is… one of the most important works printed in our language that deals with grief, in my opinion.
Helpful
 Report
Andreea
4.0 out of 5 stars Quite interesting
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
By the time Thomas De Quincey wrote "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" the subject of narcotics was very much a taboo, thus the author was the founder of a new type of literature - addiction literature.
The book`s structure is as follows: Part l (To the Reader and Preliminary Confessions), Part II (Pleasures of Opium, Introduction to the Pains of Opium, The Pains of Opium, May 1818, June 1819), Appendix and Footnotes.
When De Quincey was seven, his father died, living him in the care of four tutors. After changing several esteemed boarding schools, the protagonist came to Eton, where he discovered his passion for Old Greek and Ancient literature. However, he wanted to drop out of school when he was seventeen but his guardians didn't approve, therefore he ran away from Eton.
He traveled to Northern Wales where the villagers asked him to do small work as an exchange to food and a place to say. Unfortunately, he ran short of money and he was forced to move on, thus he found himself in London. There he almost starved to death, but a fifteen-years-old prostitute - Ann -saved him and thus the two became friends. Her gesture and his sympathy for her followed him all his life, but he did not see her again because he had never asked for her last name.
Being fed up with poverty, De Quincey asks an old school friend - Earl of D - to lend him some money to return home. He reconciles with his family and goes to Oxford University.
From this point on, the narrator begins to tell his reader about his good and bad experiences with opium. As De Quincey confesses, the previous period of his life left deep marks on his health - severe stomachaches, intolerance to certain foods and psychic traumas. The first time he used opium was after a friend suggested it as a pain-killer for toothache. Afterwards, he began consuming it regularly by counting the drops .Throughout the years he had to consume more because the doze didn't have the same pleasant effects. The obsessive counting of the drops may represent the fact that De Quincey wanted to keep his addiction under control, because he took it for medical reasons, not for pleasure.
My favorite part of the book is when De Quincey began to feel the bad effects of opium such as the hallucinations and nightmares, which usually took place in Orient and North Africa (China, Turkey, and Egypt etc.), places that exported opium to Europe. The Malay, who has previously showed up at his door and to whom De Quincey offers a good amount of opium, he will also appear in the author's dreams.
The style of the Confessions is erudite, seasoned with Greek terms, references to Ancient literature and other domains. (art, economy, politic science etc.) Even if the title suggests the idea of confessions regarding the author's life, here opium is the center piece of the book, with its positive and negative effects. There are also many digressions that might annoy the reader, but they have their purpose, such as the causes and the justification for De Quincey's use of opium.
11 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
P. Carson
3.0 out of 5 stars Classic description of the use of opium in the time of Charles Dickens
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2013
Verified Purchase
I decided to read this classic description of the effects of consuming opium because it was mentioned in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and because opium use is such an important element in Dickens' last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I am not fully sure how the use of opium in Dickens' time differs from the use of heroin today. I know, of course, that opium was smoked and is probably still smoked in Chinese opium dens, but that it was usually dissolved in alcohol, as "laudanum", in Europe. Heroin, on the other hand, is usually melted and injected directly into the blood stream. If the author, Thomas de Quincey, suffered terrible hallucinations from heavy use of laudanum, I can only guess at the severity of the effects of heroin injection.

I found this book, published about 1820, quite dated, telling me much more about its author than about the positive and negative effects of opium use. That the use was quite widespread surprised me, although I learned that opium was neither taxed nor banned in England in the author's time period. De Quincey's description of the effects of opium during the first eight or nine years of his use is really more interesting that his description of the horrors he experienced after that time, when he tried to decrease and stop his usage -- to save his life. I will cite just a couple of quotations to illustrate the different stages of the story.

The effect of opium use upon the author's mind and his appreciation of music: "Certainly opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system . . . It is sufficient to say that a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life — not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music."

One of the milder effects of over-usage: "But my proper vocation, as I well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight"

A compendium of several of the author's descriptions of opium's terrifying disruption of his sleep: "The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive . . . did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night — nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time . . . This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have indeed seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true; viz., that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual."

This book is interesting, but I suggest that you skim some of the early sections, which describe the author's early life in much detail, and pay more attention to his description of his actual experiences with the drug and with trying to terminate his usage. What happened to the author after the publication of this book, I do not know, but suspect that he never fully escaped the consequences of his long usage.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Reinold F.
5.0 out of 5 stars As walking a road of stones and fallen petals. (public domain edition)
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2019
Verified Purchase
Beautifully written the prose contrast with the harsh source material. A rebel teen subjects himself to the uttermost poverty, hunger and sickness. Self exiled the suffering drives him to terrible choices... what objectively is an interesting story is also a painful record of real occurences. There is no judgment in the part of mature De Quincey to his teen self. I wonder if it is due that in essence he is the same rebel teen, fighting for his ideals.

If you expect a kind of hippie chronicle of hallucinatory trips you are not going to find it here, dreams are not much explored. It is more the road and circumstances that took De Quincey for that route; maybe a bit of vice but, according to him, peace and pause from his discomforts and malaises (an escape), and mental acuity to work. In this time of his life De Quincey is accompanied with other dreamers in suffering, and with aristocratic gentlemen quite polite to suggest him a change in his life. To me the saddest was that he could had avoided, in any moment, his suffering.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Tonya Chapin
2.0 out of 5 stars A big disappointment
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2020
Verified Purchase
I was disappointed with this book. It is not easy reading. I am not even going to finish it. I am a constant reader, so it means a lot when I say that.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
NATALIA
5.0 out of 5 stars On time and great book
Reviewed in Mexico on November 20, 2019
Verified Purchase
Loved it, nice edition
Report
Simon P
5.0 out of 5 stars A historical insight into opioid addiction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed reading this classic. It wasn't the easiest read, but worth persevering.
4 people found this helpful
 Report
Saket Jha
5.0 out of 5 stars Saket jha
Reviewed in India on February 2, 2019
Verified Purchase
I bought this book and it is great, it is one of the best novel
One person found this helpful
 Report
maria giannelli
4.0 out of 5 stars un libro antico
Reviewed in Italy on March 24, 2016
Verified Purchase
Anche se era molto ardito ai suoi tempi, questo libro è estremamente datato, e leggerlo in inglese è divertente proprio per il linguaggio e la meticolosità quasi scientifica che De Quincey usa nella descrizione delle sue esperienze che, pur ripetendo lui che sono state terribili e negative, appaiono spesso molto fascinose e attraenti al lettore. Il libro è comunque un po' lento e non l'ho ancora finito, conto di farmelo durare ancora un po', è una buona compagnia d'altri tempi.
Report
Lukas Töpelmann
5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting piece of literature
Reviewed in Germany on January 8, 2014
Verified Purchase
An astonishing piece of very well written literature. It allows you to get a clue of the effects of opium.
One person found this helpful
 Report