Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings

Thomas De Quincey, an English essayist during the turn of the nineteenth century, began life as a fairly sickly child, and would spend much of his life in the grips of one illness or another. Through a series of misguided attempts at getting an education, De Quincey dropped out of college and instead became a vagrant. The youth barely had enough food to eat and resorted to begging in order to survive. These years served as a depressing foundation for his later years, which were marred by isolati