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201st out of 384 books
—
2,103 voters
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London—and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey—under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, Confessions seamlessly weaves th...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
April 29th 2003
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1821)
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3.5 stars. One can see why Confessions was such a favorite among the drug-addled youngsters of the 60s and 70s. The title is catchy but--surprise!--its not primarily a book about drug experiences, only the last 20 or so pages plumb that. It's about suffering, homelessness, and penury. There were passages that reminded me of 1993's Travels With Lizbeth by Lars Eighner, a wonderfully written book about homelessness.
The class system of Britain, thank God it's dying, systemically prevented true ele...more
The class system of Britain, thank God it's dying, systemically prevented true ele...more
Apr 21, 2013
Paul
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
lifestyles-of-the-weird-and-famous
If there is reincarnation I want them to put a hold on mine until humanity has invented drugs that don't have a down-side to them. No tiresome side effects, like early death. And they'll be cheap. And you'll still be able to fire up your jet pack and get to the office and do your job and impress your team leader. And no skin blemishes. O drugs of the future, I salute you and your friendliness and complete lack of ill effects!
Because you see opium, for one, as Thomas de Quincey demonstrates in t...more
Because you see opium, for one, as Thomas de Quincey demonstrates in t...more
28 likes · like · see review
The Opium Eaters, a play by A Weeder
Characters: Marcel Proust
Thomas de Quincey
The curtain goes up on a bedroom scene. Two of the walls are cork-lined, the third is a bare stone wall, roughly coated with Roman cement. In the angle of the two cork-lined walls is a narrow, wrought-iron bedstead covered with an eiderdown quilt and beside it, a night-table on which lie books, papers, and a little brass bell.
Against the stone wall, there is a brass bedstead, piled high with blankets, and beside it a...more
Characters: Marcel Proust
Thomas de Quincey
The curtain goes up on a bedroom scene. Two of the walls are cork-lined, the third is a bare stone wall, roughly coated with Roman cement. In the angle of the two cork-lined walls is a narrow, wrought-iron bedstead covered with an eiderdown quilt and beside it, a night-table on which lie books, papers, and a little brass bell.
Against the stone wall, there is a brass bedstead, piled high with blankets, and beside it a...more
16 likes · like · see review
"First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs." Whee!
While this is maybe not indispensable, it's also not more than 100 pages, so it gets five stars based on its ratio of awesomeness vs. time commitment. And it is pretty awesome. De Quincey is funny and weird and literate, and the roots of all kinds of drug stories - from those quoted above to Trainspotting and, oh, A Million Little Pieces - are clearly visible.
In one of tho...more
While this is maybe not indispensable, it's also not more than 100 pages, so it gets five stars based on its ratio of awesomeness vs. time commitment. And it is pretty awesome. De Quincey is funny and weird and literate, and the roots of all kinds of drug stories - from those quoted above to Trainspotting and, oh, A Million Little Pieces - are clearly visible.
In one of tho...more
12 likes · like · see review
If I published under my own name a book that was this bad, I’d fall through the floor for shame. With fewer than 20 pages drearily sketching the use of opium, what’s left is a mind-numbing autobiography of atrocious prose in service to pathological vanity. How does this writer get away with it?
The structure is a disaster. A footnote on one page tells about the family name Quincey; that footnote refers readers to an appendix; that appendix has yet more footnotes, all devoted to the name. Other f...more
The structure is a disaster. A footnote on one page tells about the family name Quincey; that footnote refers readers to an appendix; that appendix has yet more footnotes, all devoted to the name. Other f...more
12 likes · like · see review
Sep 24, 2012
Erik Graff
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
De Quincey fans
Recommended to Erik by:
no one
Shelves:
biography
As one of the projects for a Public Speaking course taken during the summer after sophomore year of high school, I took up research on the then-controversial topic of psychotropic drugs in order to deliver a paper on the topic. My sources were every book I could find in the Maine South library on the subject and a number of articles found in my grandparents' copies of Time and Life magazines. I didn't know it at the time, but the conservative owners of Time-Life, the Luces, were themselves fans...more
Wow, quite a good read. He is a complete genius, though he tends to ramble on... albeit brilliantly. I enjoyed the olde timey vocabulary, and the archaic references. It made the book slow to read, but it also makes it a unique piece of history to enjoy. Grab a blanket, sit on an easy chair, and bust out that bottle of laudanum you got from ye olde apothecary.
Classic read... Brilliantly written, almost poetical prose... I have the impression that it was written for a highly educated reader, full of learned quotations from the world classics (in original language, Greek or Latin). The writer spoke eloquently and effectively on the joys of consuming opium, but at the end of the book he spoke of his pains, nightmares, insomnia and his struggle to stop using it. With too many digressions (that I actually liked a lot) he writes chapters of the pleasures a...more
After circling this book for years, I finally read it today. And it knocked my socks off. DeQuincey writes like an angel. Even in the less structured passages (his descriptions of his opium dreams are somewhat disjointed) his writing is so astonishingly brilliant that the reader is swept along.
In her introduction to the Penguin Classic edition, Alethea Hayter describes DeQuincey's prose as "highly charged, close-textured, every word and syllable choice enriched with music and imagery", "prose (...more
In her introduction to the Penguin Classic edition, Alethea Hayter describes DeQuincey's prose as "highly charged, close-textured, every word and syllable choice enriched with music and imagery", "prose (...more
3 likes · like · see review
Nov 26, 2008
Galen
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
lovers of beautifully crafted English
Recommended to Galen by:
No one, but I've seen it quoted in writers like Borges.
[First, this book has virtually nothing to do with the modern drug culture...]
I picked this up knowing its reputation as a classic of Victorian literature and having heard of the author's brilliant and penetrative style. I'd also seen fascinating allusions to his work in the fiction of Borges and elsewhere.
De Quincey is most definitely a brilliant writer and stylist. I enjoyed this book as much for the beauty of his language as for the stories it tells. And there is a lot more to his _Confession...more
I picked this up knowing its reputation as a classic of Victorian literature and having heard of the author's brilliant and penetrative style. I'd also seen fascinating allusions to his work in the fiction of Borges and elsewhere.
De Quincey is most definitely a brilliant writer and stylist. I enjoyed this book as much for the beauty of his language as for the stories it tells. And there is a lot more to his _Confession...more
The Dalai Lama once said that ‘sleep is the best meditation.’ Because it is in our dreams where we are completely free from restricting our minds to realism. We can explode into indulgence, feeling magical and lifted, unlike any other senses in our waking life. It is within the timeframe of our induced state that we are able to fully express our egos and relive memories of which we are normally out of touch. Contrarily, nightmares can have a polar opposite effect. The feelings of distortion and...more
(The version I read was a different edition) At Whitby in the 2nd hand bookshop I found a 1886 copy of “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” by Thomas de Quincy. It was a fantastic little copy with some uncut pages, and also contained “Levena” and “Our lady of Sorrows” from his Suspira de Profundis as well as some other later excerpts on Opium, an essay on the history of the Rosicrucian and the Freemasons, and some translations of Kant. All in all most delightful. I enjoyed the book no end. It...more
A truly funny feverish and sad memoir. Details Quincey's account of his childhood in the first part, particulalrly the story of a young prostitute named Anne who helps him in his poverty and whom he promises to see again but never does, is poignant. His account of the good years he has with opium is very witty and ebullient. I particularly like his drily funny annecdote of the Malay who showed up on his doorstep one night. The tone suddenly shifts into nightmarish surrealism in the last part, ma...more
I must admit to reading this book in the company of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (which Coleridge claims appeared to him in an opium-induced vision) and found myself convinced DeQuincy was the imitator. If I recall correctly he seems to have made quite a profit signing his work as The English Opium Eater for the rest of his life: cue images of titles cowering meekly beneath the names of contemporary serial authors.
I must also admit that, as a rule, I hate memoirs as an offensively self-indulgent ge...more
I must also admit that, as a rule, I hate memoirs as an offensively self-indulgent ge...more
Thomas de Quincey started taking opium in the form of laudanum - conveniently available over the counter from all good chemists in early 19th century Britain - as pain relief. At no time was he taking his opium directly either by smoking or even eating, the title is indicative of his interest in finding the right phrase or most striking turn of words rather than the most accurate description. The downside of this is that in the second edition of his book he expanded sections and in doing so cros...more
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater launched Thomas de Quincey’s literary career in 1821. It’s supposedly an account of his experiences as an opium user, and of the pleasures and pains of opium. In some ways it’s more a prose poem than autobiography, and this is even more true of the other three examples of his writing included in the Oxford World’s Classics edition. Of course in those far-off and in many ways more enlightened days opium was legal, and de Quincey - who was an opium user for th...more
to my knowledge this is a first-hand account, a nonfiction. it will take at least a second reading for me to sort through the vast telling of the opium-eaters first-hand report.
i am not a drug user of any sort, either for forgetfulness or for speed although i do have 3 prescription medications that i take albeit none for mind-alterations but rather against cholesterol, for thyroid health, and a hormone replacement. the dutch relieve the harshness of life by unanimously agreeing to take every we...more
i am not a drug user of any sort, either for forgetfulness or for speed although i do have 3 prescription medications that i take albeit none for mind-alterations but rather against cholesterol, for thyroid health, and a hormone replacement. the dutch relieve the harshness of life by unanimously agreeing to take every we...more
Oct 25, 2009
El
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
early19th-centurylit,
put-it-in-your-journal
This is an interesting and candid look at a man in the early 19th-century (originally published 1821) who has a deep love and affection for opium. Opium, though not illegal at the time (and in fact actually highly accessible to the general public), is addictive and was often the drug of choice for many writers and poets of the time. De Quincey suffered from a chronic stomach malady for which he felt the laudanum improved. The majority of his family died off from tuberculosis, but De Quincey made...more
This was an interesting book to read-- short, very clearly organized and adroitly addressed by a conscious author to an aware audience, with an elegant prose style. Stylistically it was easy to read (if you are well-read in classic literature), and fairly light, although some sentences barely save themselves from incoherency-- one contained 6 semicolons and two colons.
What was more interesting to me was that after spending so much time elegantly describing his time as an opium addict and then e...more
What was more interesting to me was that after spending so much time elegantly describing his time as an opium addict and then e...more
El discurso de Quincey es sorprendentemente elocuente. Su confesión, más que ir dirigido al arrepentimiento o a la advertencia, es un testimonio de su experiencia con los excesos del opio y, si acaso, algunas precauciones que él sugiere a quien desee usarlo. No invita en ningún momento al lector a usar opio, sino que se limita a explicar el efecto al hablar de la "resaca" del opio, efectos secundarios (como las pesadillas o el dolor de cabeza) que corresponden proporcionalmente a la apertura int...more
As a former "eater of opium," I found De Quincey's book to be hauntingly accurate in its description of the effects of opium and the extent and feelings of addiction. Wow. Really powerful, to know that the issue of opiate addiction is nothing new and really hasn't changed since the early 19th century (except perhaps to be more widespread). Furthermore, elements of De Quincey's writing included the kind of tongue-in-cheek sarcastic remarks only an addict would really make or understand. (For exam...more
buy dried papaver somniferum pods from your local grocery, floral or horticulture store--ten pods per person but twenty when it doubt is what i've always said. break open the vagina to eternity removing the babies by billions and grind the cervix, wall and crown to powder for optimum surface area to be absorbed in tea. yes, poppy tea! tea for all...(a splash of lemon juice as the water begins to roll in boil actually creates trace amounts of heroin)
Hmm. My biggest reason for reading this book was simply because I like reading biographies and autobiographies. The second would be morbid curiosity...and the third, well, is a bit more personal and I shan't go into grand details. That being said, on a whole, the book isn't all that bad, but de Quincey's tendency to ramble on and completely and utterly stray from what he was trying to say does make reading it a bit difficult and boring at points. If you can handle difficult/tedious reading and t...more
While researching the use of opium for my own (fictional) writings into the subject, I came across this fascinating article about a fellow whose habit of collecting paraphernalia led him to become both the leading expert on them and an addict. The interview led me to the work of Dr. H.H. Kane, and Kane's analysis led me back to de Quincey, with whom I had some prior familiarity due to my literary studies.
De Quincey's writing style is precise and exacting, but he does not have that flair for stor...more
De Quincey's writing style is precise and exacting, but he does not have that flair for stor...more
7 likes · like · see review
This isn’t really about opium, at least not past the point of De Quincey briefly detailing how it’s awesome (until it isn’t) and how it gives you crazy dreams (luckily he’s an intellectual, not a farmer, because then he would have just dreamed about cows). The issue is that he never really gets into describing these dreams either, instead using the opium angle as an excuse to wax Romantic about the developmental scars that mar the human soul, the underlying traumas that later influence these noc...more
Affascinato dai romantici inglesi e per darmi delle arie lo lessi al liceo.
Stupivo i compagni con i metodi di preparazione del laudano, precisando quanti grani andavano disciolti e quali spezie usare per nascondere il forte odore dell'oppio.
Io che non ho mai neanche fumato una sigaretta.
Strana cosa l'adolescenza.
Stupivo i compagni con i metodi di preparazione del laudano, precisando quanti grani andavano disciolti e quali spezie usare per nascondere il forte odore dell'oppio.
Io che non ho mai neanche fumato una sigaretta.
Strana cosa l'adolescenza.
Unfortunately, there's very little titillating here other than the title. The first half of the book, being a straightforward chronicling of de Quincy's early life, contains no "confessions" per se, other than he at one point befriends a prostitute. De Quincy's large ego is more apparent here than in any other autobiographical account I've ever read, and that even includes David Carradine's Endless Highway. A good publicist would have done de Quincy a world of good in helping to present himself...more
I did enjoy this book a lot it is in itself rather small and as such doesn't really take up much of your time,The earlier part of the book has a biographical edge which seems to be placing the author in the context of an adventurer thus explaining his wish to indulge in opiates wheras the second part is much more a recollection of good times and bad that the author has had whilst induldging with a reflection on the dreams undertook too.
I enjoyed this book mainly as the central figure is an inter...more
I enjoyed this book mainly as the central figure is an inter...more
Jan 16, 2013
Victor Carson
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction-foreign,
classic
I decided to read this classic description of the effects of consuming opium because it was mentioned in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and because opium use is such an important element in Dickens' last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I am not fully sure how the use of opium in Dickens' time differs from the use of heroin today. I know, of course, that opium was smoked and is probably still smoked in Chinese opium dens, but that it was usuall...more
A rollicking good time, best read in the accompaniment of Diaries of an Edwardian Dandy. de Quincey's essays are better than this bildungsroman, but it's definitely worth checking out as both a fine social critique of Victorian society and some of the best early drug literature.
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Thomas de Quincey was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d...
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“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.”
—
37 people liked it
“here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.”
—
15 people liked it
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updated Feb 04, 2013 06:48pm
updated Feb 04, 2013 07:31pm