Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas De Quincey, 1822

Ideas that changed the world

Thomas De Quincey links youthful hardship, intellectual life and dream experience in a personal account of opium use.

Read the book Contents

Listen free: the LibriVox audiobook, read by Martin Geeson.

Length: 3 chapters
Reading time: About 2 hr 28 min
Words: 35,190

About the book

De Quincey does not begin with the drug itself, but with the earlier circumstances he believes a reader must understand. He wants to explain how a reasonable person could enter a condition he describes in the language of captivity.

The book combines autobiographical narration with reflection on memory, sensation and the workings of the mind. Its elaborate voice is part of the experience: a writer examines his own history while trying to convey pleasures and terrors that resist a straightforward factual account.

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Ideas that changed the world

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Thomas De Quincey died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK. Includes the original to the reader.