Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)

English essayist and critic, best-known for his autobiography Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which appeared first in 1821 in London Magazine. De Quincey was addicted to opium from his youth for the rest of his life. His influence on such writers as Poe and Baudelaire, and a number of readers tempted to experiment with opium, has been immense and notorious. "If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded of any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have, at length, accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man - have untwisted, almost to its final links the accursed chain which fettered me." (from Confessions of an English Opium Eater) Thomas De Quincey was born in the industrial city of Manchester, Lancashire. His father, who was a wealthy linen merchant, died in 1793. De Quincey was educated at schools in Bath and Winkfield. In Confessions De Quincey says that at the age of thirteen he wrote Greek with ease, and at fifteen he composed Greek verses in lyric metres and conversed in Greek fluently. From Manchester Grammar School he ran away to Wales at the age of 17 with the knowledge and support of his mother and uncle. Before returning back home, he lived on the streets of London in poverty and hunger. Later in life he often saw in his dreams "Anne of Oxford Street", a 15-year-old prostitute who showed kindness to a young runaway. To opium, in the form of laudanum, De Quincey became addicted in 1804, when he studied at Worcester College, Oxford. He used it first to relieve acute toothache. He kept a decanter of laudanum by his elbow and steadily increased the dose. De Quincey left Oxford without taking a degree. In 1807 he became a close friend with the romantic writer Taylor Coleridge, whom he met on a visit to the fashionable town of Bath. Coleridge introduced his new friend to Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, whom De Quincey greatly admired. In 1809 De Quincey went to live with them in the Lake District village of Grasmere. Suffering a series of debilitating illnesses between 1812 and 1813, De Quincey began to take opium again. He was a daily user, although he was able to control his habit until about 1817. In 1816, De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's daughter, with whom he already had a child. She was the fixed point in his life; they eventually had five sons and three daughters. Having spent his private fortune, De Quincey started to earn living by journalism, and was appointed as an editor of a local Tory newspaper, the Westmoreland Gazette. For the next 30 years he supported his family, mainly in Edinburgh, by writing tales, articles, and reviews. Early in the 1820s De Quincey moved to London, where he contributed the London Magazine and Blackwoods. His chronicle Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which first was published in London magazine and then reprinted in book form, was a mixture of stories about his life, social comments, cultural anecdotes, and descriptions both the ecstasies and the torments of the drug. The book was an instant success and an important inspiration for other writers. Confessions its title noteworthy referring to the Confessions of St. Augustine also included quotes in Greek, Latin and Italian. Without considering its intellectually and physically corruptive effects, De Quincey took the drug in hope of increasing his rationality and the sense of harmony. For him opium was not a part of criminal, alienated lifestyle. In 1826 De Quincey moved to Edinburgh. After the death of his wife in 1837, he began to use opium heavily. Between the years 1841 and 1843 he hide the creditors in Glasgow, and published then THE LOGIC OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY (1844), a dissertation on David Ricardo's economic theory, and SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS (1845), the sequel to his Confessions, in which De Quincey documented his childhood, dreams, and fantasies. From 1853 until his death De Quincey worked with his SELECTIONS GRAVE AND GAY, FROM THE WRITINGS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED, BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Although De Quincey wrote much, he published only few books and had constant financial difficulties. Most of his works were written

for periodicals. He also examined such German philosophers as Immanuel Kant, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Jean Paul Richer, and Friedrich von Schiller, and translated their writings. De Quincey's strong points were his imagination and his understanding of altered states of consciousness, of which he had his own doubts: "The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else, which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes." (The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, 1823) De Quincey's influence has been later seen in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley, and William Burroughs. Like Poe, he was interested in the criminal mind, although he was not always deadly serious with the subject: "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." (from Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, 1827) It has been suggested, that De Quincey prefigured modern Outsider-writers such as Alexander Trocchi, for whom drugs served as confirmation of their alienation from mainstream society. For further reading: Thomas De Quincey: His Life And Writings by Alexander Hay Japp (1877); A Flame in Sunlight by E. Sackwille West (1936); Thomas de Quincey by H.A. Eaton (1936); Thomas De Quincey, Literary Critic by J.E. Jordan (1952); The Mine and the Mint by A. Goldman (1965); The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: The Psychopathology of Imperialism by John Barrell (1991); De Quincey's Art of Autobiography by E. Baxter (1991); De Quincey's Disciplines by Josephine McDonagh (1994); A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing by Alina Clej (1995); De Quincey Reviewed: Thomas De Quincey's Critical Reception, 1821-1994 by Julian North (1997); The Romantic Art of Confession: De Quincey, Musset, Sand, Lamb, Hogg, Fremy, Soulie, Janin by Susan M. Levin (1998); Romanticism and Masculinity: Gender, Politics and Poetics in the Writings of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Hazlitt by Tim Fulford (1999)

Selected bibliography
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 1822 (enlarged in 1856) ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH, 1823 WALLADMOR, 1825 ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS, 1827, 1839, 1854 KLOSTERHEIM, OR THE MASQUE, 1832 (ed. by John Weeks, 1982) LAKE REMINISCENCES, 1834-40 THE LOGIC OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY, 1844 SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS, 1845 (published incompletely) THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH, 1849 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 1853 CHINA: A REVISED IMPRINT OF ARTICLES FROM "TITAN", 1857 SELECTIONS GRAVE AND GAY, FROM THE WRITINGS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED, BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1853-1860 (14 vols., ed. and rev. Thomas De Quincey) RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAKES AND THE LAKE POETS, 1862 (1948, ed. by Edward Sackwille-West; 1970, ed. by David Wright) SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS with CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 1871 (1956, ed. by Malcolm Elwin) THE UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS, 1890 (2 vols., ed. by James Hogg) THE POSTHUMOUS WORKS, 1891-93

MEMORIALS, 1891 COLLECTED WRITINGS, 1896-97 (14 vols., ed. by David Masson) LITERARY CRITICISM, 1909 THE DIARY, 1928 SELECTED WRITINGS, 1937 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAKE POETS, 1948 (written 1830-40) NEW ESSAYS BY DE QUINCEY: HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH SATURDAY POST AND THE EDINBURGH EVENING POST, 1827-1828, 1966 (ed. by Stuart M. Tave) THOMAS DE QUINCEY AS CRITIC, 1973 (ed. by J.E. Jordan) CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER, AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1985 (ed. by Grevel Lindop) THE WORKS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 2000- (22 vols., ed. by Grevel Lindop)