Confessions of an English Opium-Eater -
Thomas De Quincey
1822 - J. Moyes for Taylor and Hessey, London - First Edition
First edition of ‘the most famous account of drug addiction in English literature’ (Norman), the earliest example of ‘addiction literature’ in the English language, and one of the most controversial memoirs ever written, De Quincey illuminates the world of opioid usage in medical, recreational, and criminal capacities. Written when the author was only thirty six, he examines his own experiences of the drug alongside its wider history, from opium dens buried in the heart of London to references of ‘poppy tears’ found within Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.
In the publisher’s original boards, page edges untrimmed, with half-title and the two pages of advertisements, and housed in an exquisite custom lather and velvet clamshell case. ‘Here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.’ De Quincey experienced an amazingly tragic life filled with death, loneliness, and the full panoply of suffering, but unlike many others, it ultimately led him to great empathy. ‘For a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent.’ His iconic text would go on to influence the likes of Poe, Dickens, and the Beat Generation. ‘…he transformed our perception of drugs. De Quincey invented recreational drug-taking, not because he was the first to swallow opiates for non-medical reasons(he was hardly that), but because he was the first to commemorate his drug experience in a compelling narrative that was consciously aimed at — and consumed by — a broad commercial audience. Further, in knitting together intellectualism, unconventionality, drugs, and the city, De Quincey mapped in the counter-cultural figure of the bohemian. He was also the first flaneur, high and anonymous, graceful and detached, strolling through crowded urban sprawls trying to decipher the spectacles, faces, and memories that reside there. Most strikingly, as the self-proclaimed “Pope” of “the true church on the subject of opium,” he initiated the tradition of the literature of intoxication with his portrait of the addict as a young man. De Quincey is the first modern artist, at once prophet and exile, riven by a drug that both inspired and eviscerated him.’(Robert Morrison)  More Details
Price: HK$ 50,000 |
