Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Jonathan Derbyshire 鈥� Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)
I鈥檇 give the prize to De Quincey鈥檚 Confessions. It鈥檚 not a novel, of course, though its veracity as first-person reportage was questioned from the beginning. In any case, De Quincey鈥檚 primary aim was not so much to demonstrate the 鈥渟pecific power鈥� of opium as to reflect on the 鈥渕echanism of the imagination鈥� itself. To that end, he follows his 鈥渙wn humours鈥� rather than any 鈥渞egular narrative鈥�, and in doing so opens vistas previously unglimpsed in English prose. As Virginia Woolf observed in her essay on De Quincey, sometimes we encounter writing from which 鈥渨e all draw our pleasure from the words themselves,鈥� without having to make a 鈥渧oyage of discovery into the psychology of the writer.鈥� The Confessions, whatever its author鈥檚 shortcomings as an autobiographer, offers such pleasures in abundance.