The English Opium-eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey
Robert Morrison
Definitive life of the author of CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, journalist, political commentator and biographer.
Thomas De Quincey's friendships with leading poets and men of letters in the Romantic and Victorian periods - including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle - have long placed him at the centre of 19th-century literary studies. De Quincey also stands at the meeting point in the culture wars between Edinburgh and London; between high art and popular taste; and between the devotees of the Romantic imagination and those of hack journalism. His writing was a tremendous influence on Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, William Burroughs and Peter Ackroyd.
De Quincey is a fascinating (and topical) figure for other reasons too: a self-mythologizing autobiographer whose attitudes to drug-induced creativity and addiction strike highly resonant chords for a contemporary readership. Robert Morrison's biography passionately argues for the critical importance and enduring value of this neglected essayist, critic and biographer.
Product Details
About Robert Morrison
Reviews for The English Opium-eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey
John Carey
Sunday Times 22.11.09
I knew that I was on to a good thing with ths book before the page numbers were even out of roman numerals... This was a lively life, and this is a lively life...
Sam Leith
The Spectator 5.12.09
Morrison writes... with a combination of perspicacity and generous puzzlement... Thanks to Morrison... The life is clearer than it has ever been.
James Purdon
The Observer 6.12.09
Robert Morrison's biography is impressive, the first biography of De Quincey in almost thirty years, and is the first to use all his published and unpublished works.
Tom Paulin
The Literary Review Dec 09
The time was ripe for a new biography and Morrison has done his man proud. This is an exceptionally well-balanced account.
Jonathan Bate
Book of the Week - Sunday Telegraph - 13.12.09
Morrison provides a compelling survey of De Quincey's work as a biographer, satirist, economist, political commentator, translator, linguist and classicist.
Duncan Wu
The Independent 08.01.10 - Book of the Week
a book which is full of insight and careful reasoning... Morrison does a superb job of literary detection going through a life of lies, procrastination and deceit, and teasing out whatever truth there is to be had.
Jad Adams
The Guardian 09.01.10
This isn't a debunking biography, just a properly sceptical one, and it's clear that Morrison's enthusiasm for the man and his writings does not obscure his judgement.
Suzi Feay
The Tablet 04.03.10