1880 The Works of Thomas de Quincey "The English Opium Eater" Including all his Contributions to Periodical Literature In Sixteen Volumes

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Thomas de Quincey (15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum (opium and alcohol) addiction and its effect on his life. First published anonymously in September and October 1821 in the London Magazine, the Confessions was released in book form in 1822, and again in 1856, in an edition revised by de Quincey. From its first appearance, the literary style of the Confessions attracted attention and comment. De Quincey was deeply read in the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and assimilated influences and models from Sir Thomas Browne and other writers. In the early 1850s, De Quincey prepared the first collected edition of his works for publisher James Hogg. For that edition, he undertook a large-scale revision of the Confessions, more than doubling the work's length. Most notably, he expanded the opening section on his personal background, until it consumed more than two-thirds of the whole. The Confessions maintained a place of primacy in De Quincey's literary output, and his literary reputation, from its first publication, and it went through many editions. Yet from its publication, De Quincey's Confessions was criticized for presenting a picture of the opium experience that was too positive and too enticing to readers. De Quincey attempted to address this type of criticism. When the 1821 original was printed in book form the following year, he added an Appendix on the withdrawal process; and he inserted significant material on the medical aspects of opium into his 1856 revision. More generally, De Quincey's Confessions influenced psychology and abnormal psychology, and attitudes towards dreams and imaginative literature.

The volume titles are:

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Recollections of the Lakes

Last Days of Immanuel Kant and other writings

The English Mail Coach and other writings

Dr Samuel Parr or Whiggism in its Relation to Literature and other writings

Richard Bentley and other writings

Protestantism and other Essays

Leaders in Literature, with a notice of Traditional Errors Affecting Them

The Caesars and Other Papers

Style and Rhetoric and Other Papers

Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Other Writings

Speculations Literary and Philosophic

Logic of Political Economy and Other Papers

Autobiographical Sketches 1790 - 1803

Biographies of Shakespeare, Pope, Goethe, and Schiller, and On The Political Parties of Modern England

Suspiria de Profundis, Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and other Miscellaneous Writings