Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

by DE QUINCEY, Thomas.

$7,909 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

London: Taylor and Hessey,, 1822. A groundbreaking text of drug literature First edition, unrestored in the original boards, of the first book in English to deal in detail with drug addiction, presenting an account of the author's opium-induced hallucinations, ecstasies, and torments. The work became a widespread sensation ever since it was serialized in the London Magazine from September to October 1821. "Throughout the 19th century the work was viewed as having medical authority as a case history, and De Quincey was widely read in British and American medical circles" (ODNB). Its narrative, at once dreamlike and nightmarish, inspired the Romantics and Edgar Allan Poe, who used the Confessions as a model for "the fearful coloured into the horrible" (letter to Thomas W. White, 30 April 1835). It later laid the intellectual foundation for most of the modern drug literature of Cocteau, Burroughs, and other Beats. Duodecimo, pp. vi, 206. Uncut in original boards, printed paper spine label. Housed in custom red cloth chemise and pull-off morocco box. Engraved bookplate of Robert Norton Ganz, paediatrician of Chilmark, Massachusetts; ticket of The Torch Press Book Shop, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on rear pastedown, with their customer's ownership inscription on rear free endpaper recto. Loss to label and spine foot, splits to joints, holding soundly, patch of skinning to front cover, light wear to edges, occasional gentle foxing. A very good copy. Ashley II, p. 37; Norman 619.

• Year: 1822
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: hardcover

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