num_pages: 462
description: Author of the famed and scandalous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) has long lacked a full-fledged biography. His friendships with leading poets and men of letters in the Romantic and Victorian periodsincluding William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlylehave 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 Morrisons biography passionately argues for the critical importance and enduring value of this neglected icon of English literature.
language: English
title: The English Opium Eater
publisher: Pegasus Books