Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey

He remembers her kindness for the rest of his life, but can never find her after he returns to London in later years because he never discovered her last name. Ann became a prostitute after her belongings were stolen, and she becomes good friends with De Quincey. In addition to the little girl, De Quincey also befriended Ann, a fifteen-year-old prostitute who bought him a bottle of spiced wine when he was dying of starvation. He shared this apartment with a little girl who was afraid of ghosts. There, he nearly starved, although he managed to find lodging in an unoccupied apartment. He had to leave these young people when their elderly parents came home from a Methodist meeting in a nearby town, so De Quincey went to London. In one memorable incident, he stayed for several days with a group of teenage brothers and sisters who greatly enjoyed his company. He was impressed by the working class’s hospitality. He quickly ran out of money and began to rely on the charity of villagers, offering to do odd jobs for them like writing letters in exchange for food and shelter. There, he stayed in an inn for several weeks but left after the innkeeper offended him by revealing her suspicions that De Quincey was a swindler. He set out on foot with only his clothes and two books, and ended up traveling to North Wales. At seventeen, he ran away from his current boarding school because his guardians would not let him drop out. Although he appreciated one teacher he had at Eton, he mostly looked down on his teachers because they were not as fluent as he was in ancient Greek – his academic passion. As a young boy, he attended a number of upscale boarding schools. According to De Quincey, opium use is more widespread than people know, but the public has many misconceptions about the drug.ĭe Quincey’s father died when he was seven. He tried his hardest to resist opium, but could not because it was such an effective pain-killer and he was suffering from numerous physical ailments.

He hopes that it will be “instructive” (1), which is why he is willing to go into such explicit details about his personal life.

Overall, it is a selective autobiography of its author, with most focus on experiences that help explain his use of, addiction to, and ultimate defeat of opium.ĭe Quincey introduces Confessions of an English Opium-Eater as an extract from a longer autobiography. Confessions of an English Opium Eater is broken into two parts, each of which was published separately and each of which is broken further into sub-sections.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey