1890 OPIUM DRUGS DRUG ADDICTION THOMAS DE QUINCEY RARE

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1890 OPIUM DRUGS DRUG ADDICTION THOMAS DE QUINCEY RARE Description: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum (opium and alcohol) addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight...." First published anonymously in September and October 1821 in the London Magazine, the Confessions was released in book form in 1822, and again in 1856, in an edition revised by De Quincey.ON AUCTION is a nice Victorian edition of the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Selected Essays, by Thomas De Quincey. Published by A.L. Burt Co., New York, with no date, but approximately 1890 or so. 369 pages, bound in olive cloth with gilt titles, 8x5 inches. A solid copy. As originally published, De Quincey's account was organized into two parts:Part I begins with a notice "To the Reader," to establish the narrative frame: "I present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life...." It is followed by the substance of Part I,Preliminary Confessions, devoted to the author's childhood and youth, and concentrated upon the emotional and psychological factors that underlay the later opium experiences — especially the period in his late teens that De Quincey spent as a homeless runaway in Oxford Street in London in 1802 and 1803.Part II is split into several sections:A relatively brief introduction and connecting passage, followed byThe Pleasures of Opium, which discusses the early and largely positive phase of the author's experience with the drug, in the years 1804 through 1812;Introduction to the Pains of Opium, which delivers a second installment of autobiography, taking De Quincey from youth to maturity; andThe Pains of Opium, which recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience (up to that time), with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms.Another "Notice to the Reader" attempts to clarify the chronology of the whole.Though De Quincey was later criticized for giving too much attention to the pleasure of opium and not enough to the harsh negatives of addiction, The Pains of Opium is in fact significantly longer than The Pleasures. The problem is that even when trying to convey darker truths, De Quincey's language can seem seduced by the compelling nature of the opium experience:"The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to conceive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience."StyleFrom its first appearance, the literary style of the Confessions attracted attention and comment. De Quincey was deeply read in the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and assimilated influences and models from Sir Thomas Browne and other writers. Arguably the most famous and often-quoted passage in the Confessions is the apostrophe to opium in the final paragraph of The Pleasures:"Oh! just, subtle, and might opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for 'the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel,' bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure of blood...."De Quincey modelled this passage on the apostrophe "O eloquent, just and mightie Death!" in Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.Earli... read more

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