'For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination' Thomas De Quincey's three essays 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts' centre on th[...]

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A masterpiece of autobiography, and perhaps the first literary memoir of an addict, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" is edited with an introduction by Barry Milligan. "Confessions" is a remarkable account of the pleasures and pains of wors[...]

'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...' In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practical[...]

A dynamic biography of one of the most mysterious members of Wordsworth s circle and the last of the Romantics

Thomas De Quincey was an obsessive. He was obsessed with Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose Lyrical Balladsprovided the script to his life, and by the idea of sudden death. Running away[...]

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is a central figure of English Romanticism. CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER, his best-known work, is an account of his early life and opium addiction. De Quincey lived his full three score years and ten. But few would have predicted it, for his father and numerous[...]

In the first part of this famous work, published in 1821 but then revised and expanded in 1856, De Quincey vividly describes a number of experiences during his boyhood which he implies laid the foundations for his later life of helpless drug addiction. The second part consists of his remarkable acco[...]

En vinternat i 1811 myrdede John Williams en ung familie i London. To uger efter myrdede han en værtshusholder og dennes husholdning. Mordene var blodige og bestialske – men John Williams tog hemmeligheden om, hvorfor alle disse mennesker skulle dø, med sig i graven. Måske vidste han d[...]

"I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive." So begins "The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." Origi[...]