The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas de Quincey
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Morrison, Robert, PUBLISHER: Pegasus Books, Author of the famed and scandalous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas De Quincey () has long lacked a full-fledged biography. His friendships with leading poets and men of letters in the Romantic and Victorian periods--including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle--have long placed him at the center of nineteenth century literary studies. He was a man who engaged with nearly every facet of literary culture, including the roles played by publishers, booksellers, and journalists in literary production, dissemination and evaluation. His writing was a tremendous influence on Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, and William Burroughs. De Quincey is a fascinating (and topical) figure for other reasons, too: a self-mythologizing autobiographer whose attitudes to drug-induced creativity and addiction strike highly resonant chords for a contemporary readership. Robert Morrison's biography passionately argues for the critical importance and enduring value of this neglected icon of English literature.