In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions
the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures
and infernal lows of an existence dependent on "subtle and mighty
opium". At once moving and rhapsodic, and suffused with a poetic and
lyrical beauty, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater hauntingly
evokes frightful scenes and phantasmagorical night-time wanderings,
while reality, dream and memory blur and intertwine in a nebulous and
protean haze.
Published anonymously in The London Magazine, the Confessions were an
immediate success, and soon speculation was rife as to the identity of
the mysterious Opium-Eater. The work, which introduced the literary
world to De Quincey's unique "impassioned prose", is now widely deemed
to be De Quincey's masterpiece.