Book description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HOWARD MARKS
Once upon a time, opium (the main ingredient of heroin) was easily
available over the chemist's counter. The secret of happiness, about
which philosophers have disputed for so many ages, could be bought for
a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies could
be corked up in a pint bottle. Paradise? So thought Thomas de
Quincey, but he soon discovered that 'nobody will laugh long who deals
much with opium'.
Thomas De Quincey was born on 15 August 1789 in Manchester, the son
of an affluent cloth merchant. He ran away from the Manchester Grammar
school aged 17 and travelled in poverty in Wales and London before being
reconciled with his family. He then attended Oxford University, where he
first began to take opium. Despite excelling at his studies, De Quincey
left university without completing his degree and married Margaret
Simpson, the daughter of a local farmer. Having exhausted his
inheritance, partly due to his addiction to opium, De Quincey found work
as a journalist and wrote prolifically on various subjects for numerous
publications.
Confessions of a English Opium-Eater
was published in the
London Magazine
in 1821 and found instant success. He went on to write several novels
and biographies, and his unusual autobiographical style made his work
extremely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. When De Quincey's wife
Margaret died in 1837, his opium addiction worsened and he moved away
from London to Scotland to relieve his straitened finances. He died in
Edinburgh on 8 December 1859
