Thomas De Quincey – författare

I syfte att bota enveten migrän och en plågsam magåkomma utvecklade Thomas De Quincey tidigt ett svårt opiumberoende. Paradisets portar slogs omedelbart upp på vid gavel, men han kom senare – under försöken att sluta – att störta ner i sin själs allra djupaste avgrunder. Under abstinensen vaknade mardrömmarna med sällsam kraft, något han intensivt och öppenhjärtigt redogör för i bland annat Suspiria de Profundis, uppföljaren till den beryktade En engelsk opieätares bekännelser. Här finns De Quinceys alla opietexter samlade.

In an examination of his laudanum addiction and the dreams and visions the drug engendered, Thomas De Quincey lays bare the celestial pleasures and infernal lows of an existence dependent on “subtle and mighty opium”. At once moving and rhapsodic, and suffused with a poetic and lyrical beauty, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater hauntingly evokes frightful scenes and phantasmagorical night-time wanderings, while reality, dream and memory blur and intertwine in a nebulous and protean haze.Published anonymously in The London Magazine, the Confessions were an immediate success, and soon speculation was rife as to the identity of the mysterious Opium-Eater. The work, which introduced the literary world to De Quincey’s unique “impassioned prose”, is now widely deemed to be De Quincey’s masterpiece.

A masterpiece of autobiography, and perhaps the first literary memoir of an addict, the Penguin Classics edition of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is edited with an introduction by Barry Milligan.Confessions is a remarkable account of the pleasures and pains of worshipping at the 'Church of Opium'. Thomas De Quincey consumed daily large quantities of laudanum (at the time a legal painkiller), and this autobiography of addiction hauntingly describes his surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings through London, along with the nightmares, despair and paranoia to which he became prey. The result is a work in which the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory and imagination are seamlessly interwoven, describing in intimate detail the mind-altering pleasures and pains unique to opium. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, paving the way for later generations of literary addicts from Baudelaire to James Frey, and anticipating psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.This edition is based on the original serial version of 1821, and reproduces two 'sequels', 'Suspiria de Profundis' (1845) and 'The English Mail-Coach' (1849). It also includes a critical introduction discussing the romantic figure of the addict and the tradition of confessional literature, and an appendix on opium in the nineteenth century.Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) studied at Oxford, failing to take his degree but discovering opium. He later met Coleridge, Southey and the Wordsworths. From 1828 until his death he lived in Edinburgh and made his living from journalism.If you enjoyed Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, you might like William S. Burroughs' Junky, available in Penguin Modern Classics.'De Quincey was one of the first great autobiographers'Jonathan Bate

'For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination'Thomas De Quincey's three essays 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts' centre on the notorious career of the murderer John Williams, who in 1811 brutally killed seven people in London's East End. De Quincey's response to Williams's attacks turns morality on its head, celebrating and coolly dissecting the art of murder and its perfections. Ranging from gruesomely vivid reportage and brilliantly funny satiric high jinks to penetrating literary and aesthetic criticism, the essays had a remarkable impact on crime, terror, and detective fiction, as well as on the rise of nineteenth-century decadence.The volume also contains De Quincey's best-known piece of literary criticism, 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth', and his finest tale of terror, 'The Avenger', a disturbing exploration of violence, vigilantism, and religious persecution. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'I took it: - and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!'Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a fascination with drug use and abuse that has continued from his day to ours. In the Confessions De Quincey invents recreational drug taking, but he also details both the lurid nightmares that beset him in the depths of his addiction as well as his humiliatingly futile attempts to renounce the drug. Suspiria de Profundis centres on the deep afflictions of De Quincey's childhood, and examines the powerful and often paradoxical relationship between drugs and human creativity. In 'The English Mail-Coach', the tragedies of De Quincey's past are played out with horrifying repetitiveness against a backdrop of Britain as a Protestant and an imperial power.This edition presents De Quincey's finest essays in impassioned autobiography, together with three appendices that are highlighted by a wealth of manuscript material related to the three main texts. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Famed for his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas De Quincey later supplemented his sensational account of drug addiction with Suspiria de Profundis ("Sighs from the Depths"). These short essays, rendered in a highly poetic and imaginative style, reflect the author's visionary experiences during his use of laudanum. Their influence extends to modern-day filmmaking, including Dario Argento's 1977 Suspiria and Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake.