Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

THOMAS DE QUINCEY Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Thomas de Quincey, scholar, essayist, critic, opium-eater, was born at Manchester on August 15, 1785. A singularly sensitive and imaginative boy, De Quincey rapidly became a brilliant scholar, and at fifteen years of age could speak Greek so fluently as to be able, as one of his masters said, "to harangue an Athenian mob." He wished to go early to Oxford, but his guardians objecting, he ran away at the age of seventeen, and, after wandering in Wales, found his way to London, where he suffered privations that injured his health. The first instalment of his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" appeared in the "London Magazine" for September 1821. It attracted universal attention both by its subject-matter and style. De Quincey settled in Edinburgh, where most of his literary work was done, and where he died, on December 8, 1859.