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The play The Opium Eater by Andrew Dallmeyer was based on Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, [16] and has been published by Capercaillie Books. [17] [18] In 1962, Vincent Price starred in the full-length film Confessions of an Opium Eater, which was a reimagining of De Quincey's Confessions by Hollywood producer Albert Zugsmith.
The avowed purpose of the first version of the Confessions was to warn the reader of the dangers of opium, and it combined the interest of a journalistic exposé of a social evil, told from an addict’s point of view, with a somewhat contradictory and seductive picture of the subjective pleasures of drug addiction. The book begins with an autobiographical account of the author’s addiction.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Confessions of an English Opium Eater is broken into two parts, each of which was published separately and each of which is broken further into sub-sections. Overall, it is a selective autobiography of its author, with most focus on experiences that help explain his use of, addiction to, and ultimate defeat of opium. To the Reader.
- Thomas De Quincey
To the Reader and Preliminary Confessions. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) begins his confessions by addressing the audience and stating his purpose. He acknowledges that medical doctors and scholars have written about the negative effects of opium use but he claims to know significantly more than them because of his extensive personal use.
- A Sickly Outsider
- Influence
- Dense and Strange
De Quincey was an odd one. Born in England in 1785, he was a sickly child, and only grew to five feet. He was an outsider. But he was remarkably intelligent. From an early age he loved philosophy, Greek and literature, especially the poetry of Wordsworth. As he tells us in Confessions, one of his school masters observed: “that boy could harangue an...
Many well-known figures were influenced by De Quincey. Edgar Allan Poe drew on Confessions and other works by De Quincey in his short story The Purloined Letter (1844). Charles Baudelaire’s Les Paradis Artificiels(1860) was a translation and adaptation of Confessions. But beyond direct literary influence, De Quincey, as writer Lucy Inglis puts it, ...
Confessions is short – my Penguin copy is under 100 pages. Yet it is a dense and strange work: at once a story, a memoir and an essay. Astoundingly poetic, it is also burdened with far too many references to literature and philosophy (thisis one of the many rabbit holes you could go down) and digressions and introductions and preliminary remarks an...
- Jamie Q Roberts
Plot Summary. In his autobiographical account Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), English author Thomas De Quincey chronicles his addiction to laudanum (a popular opium cocktail of the time) and the growing impact it had on his life. The first major work De Quincey published, it explores themes of addiction, drug culture, and the way ...
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Jan 31, 2017 · In his 1821 memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar, essayist Thomas De Quincey, the famed “Opium-eater” himself, proudly attributes the superior power of his opium-infused dreams to his natural disposition. He is a real philosopher on his own, but the opium he consumes intensifies his ...
