Thomas De Quincey

British author (1785-1859) · United Kingdom · Writers · Died at 74

Thomas De Quincey is read about 356 times a day, in 45 languages.

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He turned addiction into literature. Thomas De Quincey's 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater didn't just chronicle dependency - it invented a genre, giving the West its first full-dress portrait of the addict as author.

Writers Writer / Author Journalism Literature Fiction Stand Up Philosophy 19th Century

A life in dates

1859Died8 December 18591823“Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.”In their wordsLetter to Hessey (1823).Read the whole statement

1822“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that?”In their wordsPt. I.Read the whole statement

“Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!”In their wordsPt. II.Read the whole statement

“Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated - everlasting farewells!”In their wordsPt. III.Read the whole statement

“In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.”In their wordsConfessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)Read the whole statement

1804“It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.”In their wordsPt. II, Recalling the day in 1804 when he first took opium.Read the whole statement

1785Born15 August 1785

Also in Deutsch

Photos 4

John Watson Gordon (1788-1864) - Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), Author and Essayist - PG 553 - National Galleries of Scotland

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In their own words 10

Thomas De Quincey

10 statements, newest first

Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
1823, Letter to Hessey (1823)., Own words
The burden of the incommunicable.
1822, Pt. I., Own words
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that?
1822, Pt. I., Own words

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Family

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Thomas De Quincey

Children

Sibling Henry de Quincey

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About this person

Thomas Penson De Quincey was born on 15 August 1785 and spent his career as an essayist and literary critic in England. In 1821 he published Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, a work that many scholars credit with inaugurating the entire Western tradition of addiction literature - making the interior life of dependency a subject for serious prose. The book established him as a writer willing to map forbidden territory with clarity and style. He continued working as a critic and essayist until his death on 8 December 1859, but that single confession remains the line that defined him.

Country

United Kingdom

Writers from the United Kingdom 6

Peter Shaffer57.6 Margery Allingham57.6

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