Really worthwhile only as a historical curio. Which is why I read it, I suppose.

English speakers didn't develop concision in writing until the turn of the century, I believe.

I remember being deeply impressed by DeQuincy. This bk seemed profoundly introspective & to be written w/ great exactitude to me at the time. Full of the type of observation that's hard to pin down, like trying to remember the details of dreams that really distinguish the dreamworld rather than just things that seem banal. But, then, I read it almost 33 yrs ago. Skimming thru it now I don't see that so much. ( )

When it comes to reading Confessions of an English Opium Eater the choice of edition is of considerable interest. Short of money and in need to sustain his habit De Quincey wrote it is a frenzy in 1821. More than 30 years later, in 1856, he revised it, and it is widely agreed that in doing so he spoilt it. That is why in most modern editions the text will be that of the 1821 version.

While nowadays there are many books describing first-hand experience with drugs, either describing experimenting with drugs or a life-destroying habit, Confessions of an English Opium Eater was the first of its kind. It set an example to Beaudelaire, Aldous Huxley and Burroughs & Ginsberg to name just a few of the early writers, although they are mainly experimenters who did not suffer a life-long, destructive addiction, with the exception of William Burroughs. The 1970s saw the publication of long-term heroine addicts, often held up to frighten. While the Twentieth century was the age of marihuana, heroine and cocaine, the Nineteenth century was the age of opium.

Thomas de Quincey was not an outlier or exception in his drug habit. The use of opium in the form of laudanum was widespread, and many prominent figures, including Samuel Coleridge struggled with a life-long addiction and had to kick-off to become clean. But Thomas de Quincey was the first to write about it from his own experience. De Quincey also mentions Coleridge in his book, as they were contemporaries and knew each other well.

One of the main tenets of De Quincey about the effects of opium and the kind of hallucinatory effects it brings about is that the user's past is the substrate for their hallucinatory experience. Most of the revisions of 1856 are in adding more biographical detail, to describe the foundations of his life, and thus the foundations of the effects that sprang up into his mind under the influence of the drug.

In the first part, De Quincey sets out to give a short autobiographical sketch. This is followed by a short description entitled "The Pleasures of Opium in which he describes the beginning of his addiction, namely as a relief for a tooth ache and how the prescription opened the doors to "the Paradise of Opium-eaters" (p. 70). In this part he provides some basic facts about the usage and the way laudanum was used, the cost, and he debunks some myths about drug addiction held in his time.

Like Samuel Johnson, De Quincey rose from the state of a tramp to a man at the centre of the literary world. De Quincey had had a good education, but had run away from home. In his later life he became a member of the circle around Wordsworth and Coleridge. The passage about the pleasures of opium has some delightful descriptions of society and cultural life in the late 18th and early 19th century.

De Quincey first started using opium in 1804, and between 1804 and 1812 used is unencumbered and occasionally. However, from 1813 he started taking it daily and developed an unbreakable addiction. He describes this in the next section entitled "Introduction to the pains of opium".

his then, let me repeat, I postulate - that, at the time I began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. Whether, indeed, afterwards I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make, might not have been carried much further, and my gradual reconquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically - these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but, shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudaemonist: I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others: I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness: and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit.

Like Coleridge, De Quincey was a very erudite man, and it is perhaps not well known that both English writers shared a profound interest in German metaphysics, reading Kant, Fichte, Schelling etc and translated some of their works in English. The prose of De Quincey reflects his broad knowledge of the scholarly side but also the contemporary scene, and good notes as provided by an annotated edition are indispensible.

The final part "The pains of opium" describes how he became fully dependent on opium, taking ever larger doses. It also vividly describes some of his hallucinations, however, this is not the main point of the book as whole. Readers who are specifically hoping to find these descriptions may be underwhelmed by the book. Confessions of an English Opium Eater is a classic because of its masterly prose, describing all aspects of De Quincey's experience with opium, of which the hallucinatory state is a part.

I read two editions of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, as Penguin Books re-issued the book in its Penguin Classics series in a new, and very different edition. Although cataloguing on LT suggests some division, it seems editions are also mixed up quite considerable.

The two Penguin Classics editions are complementary, and it is worth reading both of them. Both editions are based on the 1821 version of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

The 1971 edition (reprinted in 1986) was edited by Alethea Hayter. This edition has an introduction of about 25 pages, followed by the 1821 text of Confessions of an English Opium Eater taking about 90 pages, which is followed by two interesting appendices and a short section of notes, including notes on both appendices. Appendix A consists of notes, letters and articles commenting on the 'confessions' between 1821 and 1855. They include comments by other writers who mentioned the work or comments by De Quincey. Appendix B consists of a selection of substantial revisions that De Quincey made in the 1856 revision. As mentioned above, it is widely considered that the revisions had a spoiling effect. They are seen as distractions and dilutions of the original text. They mainly consist in adding more biographical detail, sometimes of a rather sentimental nature.

In 2003, Penguin Books published a new edition in its Penguin Classics series. The new edition is entirely different from the 1971 edition. The 2003 edition was edited by Barry Milligan. Like the 1971 edition it takes the 1821 version of Confessions of an English Opium Eater as its basics text (88 pages). This is preceded by a much longer introduction by the editor, in 44 pages.

Obviously, his opium addiction was a life-long obsession to Thomas De Quincey. The Penguin Classics 2003 edition is an extended edition, and the extension is reflected in the title of the edition, namely Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings. The other writings consist of two sequels that De Quincey wrote, namely Suspira de Profundis and The English Mail-Coach. It seems a wry biographical detail that De Quincey’s son Horace De Quincey died in military service in China in 1842 during the Opium War.

As mentioned above, one of the main tenets of De Quincey about the effects of opium and the kind of hallucinatory effects it brings about is that the user's past is the substrate for their hallucinatory experience. Suspira de Profundis is an unfinished fragment of about 100 pages, intended as a sequel to the ‘Confessions’. It consists of two parts, the most substantive of which is Part 1 “The affliction of childhood”. Although unfinished, it was published in Blackwood’s in 1845.

Although Thomas de Quincey was not a Victorian writer, some of his later works appeared during the Victorian period. The English Mail-Coach, or The Glory of Motion is a kind of long essay of 55 pages about transportation in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It is of interest to readers of early Victorian fiction because it describes the experience of travelling by mail-coach. During the first quarter of the 19th century this mode of transportation was soon replaced by the rail roads. Both the mail-coach and the rail roads as an up-coming phenomenon played an important part in early Victorian writing, particularly as the rail roads enabled characters in Victorian fiction to swiftly travel between London and the countryside. De Quincey wrote this as a sequel to Confessions of an English Opium Eater because it illustrates a further element of his autobiographical experience underlying his hallucinations.

The 2003 edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings is concluded with a short appendix of some short sections on “Opium in the Nineteenth Century”, “Opium and the medical professions” and “Opium and the orient” followed by notes. ( )

As far as I know, this book is the original addiction memoir, so it set the template for those that have followed. It has a three-part structure, written from the standpoint of one who has kicked the habit: First, one’s previous life, which helps illuminate why one took to the drug in the first place; secondly, the exquisite pleasures of what De Quincey calls “just, subtle, and mighty opium,” and finally, the terrors of a habit gone out of control.
Only a postscript reveals the coda: the stance of one having overcome his addiction was a fiction. It wasn’t true at the time he wrote, nor had his subsequent efforts been successful. Perhaps the most frightening sentence in the book is “not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale.”
De Quincey was a precocious scholar, especially of classical Greek. His awareness of attainment in it beyond that of his schoolmasters (and his masters’ awareness of it), combined with his inability to persuade his guardians (De Quincey was an orphan) to “go up” to Oxford ahead of time, led him to run away from school. This brought on years of intense poverty and hunger, resulting in chronic stomach pains (the cause, he asserts, of his opium abuse). This book shows evidence that the analytic ability he claims is no idle boast. He shows a keen insight into the workings of the human mind and society.
Along the way, De Quincey also challenges some of the common assumptions about the drug. One mistake, he asserts, is its designation as a narcotic. In his experience during the days of his occasional recreational use (a small dose every three weeks or so), his sip of laudanum (despite the title, he didn’t “eat” the opium, but drank it in a tincture) led to as much as eight hours of euphoria. Why waste that time sleeping! Instead, he went to the opera. Sounds appealing, but even then, he notes, “its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.”
When his stomach pain worsened, he increased both the dosage and the frequency, which soon led to harrowing experiences. In particular, his sleep becomes a nightly phantasmagoria, peopled by those he had lost through death. Even worse were the excursions to an Orient of the mind: a jumble of what he knew of China, India, and ancient Egypt. At the culmination of his description of the pains of opium, he reached the point where he felt that continued use would kill him; he was faced with a choice of two agonies: either continuing or quitting.
In rough outlines, a familiar tale. Though evident in the background, what is little expressed are the sufferings of his wife and children.
Some readers may be put off by the subject matter, others by the prose that is of its time and to current taste can seem purple. I, however, was fascinated by the combination of honesty and self-deception. Similarly, his acute insight into society didn’t keep him from failing to recognize aspects he took for granted: Part of the horror of his nocturnal dream excursions to Asia was being thrust into “the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time,” causing him to shudder, for as an Englishmen, he believed, he was “not bred in any knowledge of such institutions.”
Blind spots, self-deception: in the end, these are not just hallmarks of the addict. They are part of being human, and not even the sharpest mind is immune to them. It’s syllogistic then that I have them too, although, of course, I don’t know what they are. ( )

First Published in the London Magazine (1821)