Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea--rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
'For 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'Thomas De Quincey's three essays 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts' centre on the notorious career of the murderer John Williams, who in 1811 brutally killed seven people in London's East End.De Quincey's response to Williams's attacks turns morality on its head, celebrating and coolly dissecting the art of murder and its perfections.Ranging from gruesomely vivid reportage and brilliantly funny satiric high jinks to penetrating literary and aesthetic criticism, the essays had a remarkable impact on crime, terror, and detective fiction, as well as on the rise of nineteenth-century decadence.The volume also contains De Quincey's best-known piece of literary criticism, 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth', and his finest tale of terror, 'The Avenger', a disturbing exploration of violence, vigilantism, and religious persecution. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Was Justice Denied?
Robert Morrison's edition of de Quincey's various essays on murder is in keeping with the tradition of Oxford classics one of the best available - the text, as far as I can determine, is accurate and the footnotes informative.The major flaw is that Morrison, in his introductory materials as well as footnotes, consistently treats the guilt of John Williams in the Ratcliffe Highway murders and his "suicide" at Newgate as matters of proven fact.In their 1990 book "The Maul and the Pear Tree," the most recent historical look at the murders. P.D. James and T.A. Critchley make a strong case that Williams was in fact as much an innocent victim as those murdered and that his convenient "suicide" was a murder carried out by incompetent, corrupt local police (remember, this was well before the days of Scotland Yard) who were worried that if WIlliams got a chance in court to recuse the "confession" into which he had been bullied, public outrage over the murders would turn against them instead (James and Critchley suggest the real killer may have been "Long Billy" Amplas, a merchant sailor of criminal habits and homicidal temper known to have been in the vicinity of both crimes, but admit that at this point the trail is too cold to be sure).Morrison was aware of "The Maul and the Peartree," since he quotes it in a footnote, but apparently ignored its carefully-reasoned conclusions, possibly because it would have been less compelling to present de Quincey's work while noting that it may have been based on a blatant miscarriage of justice. ... Read more

Book Description
In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London-and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey-under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, Confessions seamlessly weaves the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination. First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs, and anticipated psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The book that inspired Dario Argento (and probably countless others)....
I first heard of this book because the great Italian horror film maker, Dario Argento, was inspired by the writings of De Quincey, specifically this book.This book contains De Quincey's most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and 2 unofficial sequels, Suspiria de Profundis (Suspiria is the title of Dario's most famous film), and The English Mail Coach.Suspiria has an essay entitled Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow in which De Quincey talks about the 3 ladies (some have said the three mothers as well).They are the lady of tears, sighs, and darkness.Dario's 2 films, Suspiria and Inferno, are about these mothers/ladies.He was never able to make the 3rd film.This is the reason I purchased the book.

De Quincey's prose is definitely difficult to read (it's not an easy, mindless self help book), but it is definitely worth reading, and it's absolutely fascinating as Thomas accounts for his opium habit, and the ways it affected him and his work.Opium was staggeringly popular during De Quincey's time, and it wasn't very difficult to get.De Quincey published the confessions twice.The original, shorter version is the one you have here, and it's the only one still available.The longer version (which I have read to some degree) is good too, but it feels padded and is rather uneven.Most scholars have agreed that the shorter version is better.I wish they had included the longer version so we could compare ourselves, but I'm happy this edition is out.

A Great Autobiographical Work of Art
I stumbled on this book while I was a long-haired undergrad in college many years ago, and I selected it (probably because of the intriguing, rebellious-sounding title) to write a term paper on for a class I was taking in biography.I have nursed a special attraction for this work of literary art ever since those days, and currently own it in several different editions, including this one from Penguin Classics.

While his writing is probably tough-going for the typical modern day reader, De Quincey was truly a master stylist of English prose (one of the greatest who ever lived) and the writing here is lushly impeccable -- beautiful and poetic.Contemporary readers, do not be afraid of this kind of book!Sure, it might be difficult to read (it's certainly not "dummied down" like so much modern day stuff), but if you don't try, I think you'll be missing out on a great adventure.After all, consider, Shakespeare and the Bible are difficult to read too!

In any event, these writings of De Quincey's, quite autobiographical, tell of the marvelous stimulus to creativity and pleasure that opium can provide (at least, in the initial phases) to those who become emeshed in her dark empire, as well as the chilling aftermath -- the pathetic fear and trembling that inevitably follow from addiction.At his peak usage, I have read that De Quincey was doing around 8,000 drops a day (approximately 80 teaspoons).As one of the other reviewers here correctly noted, tincture of opium (I think that it actually came as a liquid blend of opium, drinking alcohol, and cinnamon) was sold over-the-counter as medicine in neighborhood apothecary shops (drug stores and pharmacies) in those days.

The "Confessions" date from 1822, while a complementary sequel, "Suspiria de Profundis", dates from 1845.De Qunicey, who relapsed three times after trying to "clean himself up" and "go straight", passed away in December 1859, right about the time that Baudelaire (who also died an opium addict -- in 1867) was completing his own book (it was in direct response to De Quincey's) about the dreamy debacheries of hashish and opium, entitled "Artificial Paradises".

Flawless, beautiful prose, compelling autobiography.
This is English that one can luxuriate in and enjoy for it's precision and beauty. There are few if any English compositions that better convey subjective feeling than this book. You feel as though you are inside the author's mind as he writes so exactly and sympathetically.

As a recounting of a man's struggle with addiction it is a compelling story.

Not visions of sugar plums
It's a classic of course, but not very readable as pure entertainment.Probably the parts about his opium addiction, which are pages 44-88, are of most interest today. To be frank, most of the rest is hard going unless you're adept at reading early nineteenth century English, perhaps an English or history major. De Quincey was a rambling and digressive writer, even by nineteenth century standards. There is some fascination in the interlocking lives of this circle of writers of the romantic movement (the "Lake Poets";Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, and their contemporaries Keats, Shelley and Byron) especially if you've read Richard Holmes's wonderful biographies.
You can get the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" alone cheaper in the Dover edition. This Penguin Classics edition contained other writings which are of limited appeal, but the notes and the introduction and appendix by Barry Mulligan make it more understandable and provide useful historical background about opium use.
Opium was freely available over the counter in Englanduntil 1858, so this could be read as a warning about what might happen with legalization.It has always been a puzzle that De Quinceyand Coleridge described vivid dreams andhallucinations as part of their experience, whereas opioids usedby addicts today are not usually hallucinogenic. De Quincey was aware that his experiences were atypical and offered his own explanations("one whose talk is of oxen will dream of oxen").
I was intrigued his account of the relief of his withdrawal symptoms by the use of valerian (prescribed by Bell of Bell's palsy).

... Read more

Book Description
Best known for his work Confessions of an English Opium Eater, the Victorian writer Thomas De Quincey was a journalist and propagandist of Empire, of oriental aggression, and of racial paranoia who harbored and expressed the most ferocious and brutal denunciation of Orientals. This remarkable book is an account of De Quincey's fears of all things oriental; it is also an extraordinary analysis of the psychopathology of mid-Victorian imperialist culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Intelligence within a flawed frame
First, the good part. This book is mostly well-written and clear; it iscertainly interesting; and it is often quite convincing as well.

On theother hand, though, there is always the problem of trying to reduce the waya writer writes to environment, and alas, this book is guilty of that flawmuch too often. It tries, above all, to read De Quincey by focusing onBritish imperialism, which seems to me to be fundamentally silly. Here isthe rub: if one wants to prove that writer X writes in manner Y, then onehas to build a gigantic theoretical treehouse when there is usually a muchsimpler explanation--and much more convincing one--to be found IN THE TEXTITSELF. Surely context is important. But text is more important thancontext, and this is what this book, however intelligent, refuses toacknowledge.

However, when the book focuses on De Quincey's individualpsychology--and it does often--it is very good. ... Read more

Book Description
Julian North's De Quincey Reviewed is the first book to chart the history of De Quincey's critical reception, from the 1820s to the present. It discusses the fluctuations of his reputation in the course of his successive critical reincarnations - as madman, aesthete, fin-de-siècle degenerate, modernist, and imperialist. New insight is given into his significance as a focus for key critical controversies and movements: the Victorian critique of autobiography and style; the debate over literature and addiction; and twentieth-century phenomenological criticism. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
This selection of De Quincey's writings includes the title piece--his most famous work--as well as "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," "The English Mail-Coach," and the Suspiria de Profundis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

This is the DeQuincey you want
If you are choosing between several editions of the -Opium Eater-, this one is the one you want.

True, it does not have Alethea Hayter's introduction, like the Penguin edition has; that being a point in that one's favour.But here you -also- get the entire -Suspiria de Profundis-, which is in many ways more beautiful and interesting than the Opium Eater itself.-Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow- must surely be the single greatest prose poem ever written in English.

The -Suspiria- was intended as a sequel to the -Opium Eater-, and those who enjoy the one will want them both.

A masterpiece from a brilliant yet ignored philosopher
This masterpiece of literature is a fascinating account of the pains and pleasures of opium as well as an autobiographical account of his youth. This books illustrates that sometimes moral or other world issues are notalways in black and white. A sensitive and beautiful man, de Quincy's greatbook is a treasure!!!! ... Read more

Book Description

The ongoing critical fascination with Thomas De Quincey, and the burgeoning recognition of the centrality of his writings to the Romantic age and beyond, necessitates a critical examination.

The volume brings together ten of the top De Quincey scholars in the world, and engages directly with the immense amount of new information to be published on De Quincey in the past two decades. The book features wide-ranging and incisive assessments of De Quincey as essayist, addict, economist, subversive, biographer, autobiographer, aesthete, innovator, hedonist, and much else.