Thomas De Quincey

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.