Review: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is often described as being a minor character in English Romanticism and, in being understood as such, becomes almost a footnote to the likes of Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, as a work of Western drug-writing, it stands out as not only one of the earliest examples, but as also one of the finest of the genre. In his introduction Barry Milligan notes that De Quincey "almost singlehandedly changed opium’s popular status from the respectability of a useful medicine to the exoticism of a mind-altering drug." And it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to recognise in De Quincey’s work many of the signifiers we find so prevalent in post-WW2 drug-writing i.e. psychedelic literature.