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 the whole of his adult life – lived to be 74 and enjoyed a full and productive life.

In fact Confessions of an English Opium-Eater has so many digressions that it ends up being mostly digressions rather than a straightforward account. His digressions are entertaining, though. He seems to have considered opium’s ability to unlock the faculty of dreaming - and to de Quincey dreaming meant more than what we normally mean by that word, he meant the creative faculty as well - to be the greatest thing in opium’s favour. The whole work is somewhat tongue in cheek; even the title is something of a joke, since de Quincey really seems not in the least apologetic about his drug use.

This edition also includes Suspiria de Profundis, which is really nothing but digressions. It has its moments, but at times it’s tough going. His recollections of childhood I found particularly difficult to wade through. The English Mail-Coach, though, is extremely good. It really is a prose poem, a complex and beautifully constructed meditation upon travel, upon speed, and upon sudden death. He has a disconcerting tendency to switch very suddenly between moods, between deep emotion and rather wicked humour.

If you’re expecting a conventional piece of autobiographical writing you’re in for a bit of a shock, but once you accept that de Quincey isn’t a conventional writer there’s a great deal of stimulation and entertainment to be found in this book.