The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

First published in 1821, this autobiographical narrative recounts Thomas de Quincey's childhood, his flight from school, wanderings in Wales, and hungry months in London, then his use of opium, first as a relief from pain and later as a habit. He describes the early "pleasures" of the drug - heightened thought and dreaming - and the later "pains": nightmares, paralysis of the will, and a nightly architecture of fear. The Malay visitor and the lost girl Ann appear as remembered figures. The book is a confession and a study of addiction, not a medical treatise and not a novel.

Bound in black cloth blocked with a gilt design. White dust-jacket printed in red and black.