Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar - Tapa blanda

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was an autobiographical work by Thomas De Quincey. Originally published anonymously, it later became the work by which everything else he wrote would be judged, and found wanting. De Quincey writes about his addiction (though they didn't call it that back in the 1800s) to laudanum (opium and alcohol), and the effect it had on his life and relationships. It remains one of the best books ever written about addiction.

Thomas De Quincey was born August 15, 1785 and he died December 8, 1859. He was primarily known as an essayist, though his memoir of his addiction to laudanum (opium and alcohol), Confessions of an English Opium-Eater remains his best-known work. His essays "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" were well regarded, and the third essay, in which he dramatized the series of 1811 murders in Ratcliffe Highway, London, essentially created the True Crime genre. His work influenced many later writers from Edgar Allan Poe right up to David Morrell.