The English opium-eater

A masterful biography of one of England & rsquo;s most notorious literary figures Author of the scandalous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas De Quincey (1785 & ndash;1859) has long lacked a full-fledged biography. His friendships with leading poets and men of letters in the Romantic and Victorian periods & mdash;including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge & mdash;have long placed him at the center of nineteenth century literary studies. His writing was a tremendous influence on Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, and William Burroughs. De Quincey is a 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 Morrison & rsquo;s biography passionately argues for the critical importance and enduring value of this neglected icon of English literature.