Confessions of an english opium eater - Thomas de Quincey

A romantic of the "second echelon", an acquaintance of Coleridge and a friend of Wordsworth, with whom he lived for a long time in the Lake District, famous for all of Europe, Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) entered the history of literature as the author of the famously scandalous "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (1821) - the first frank story about the pleasures and despair of opium addiction. Although after the first publication "Confession" aroused considerable reader interest, after a few years withstanding several reprints, over time it, like the author's name itself, was gradually forgotten, until almost forty years later Charles Baudelaire breathed new life into it, dedicating Quincy and his work "Artificial Paradise". Since that time, now more than one hundred and fifty years, De Quincey's Confession has had a reputation as a classic of counter-cultural literature. De Quincey's work has served as an object of inspiration and admiration for numerous writers: from Edgar Allen Poe to Andre Breton and Jorge Luis Borges.