London: Taylor and Hessey, 1822. First edition. A Very Good copy. Twelvemo. vi, 206 pp. Uncut in the unrestored original boards with printed paper spine label. Engraved bookplate of Robert Norton Ganz, pediatrician of Chilmark, Massachusetts; ticket of the Torch Press Book Shop, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on rear pastedown, with their customer's ownership inscription on rear free endpaper recto. Loss to label and spine foot, splits to joints, holding soundly, patch of skinning to front cover, light wear to edges, occasional gentle foxing. Housed in custom red cloth chemise and pull-off morocco box.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater was the first book in English to deal extensively with drug addiction, presenting an account of the author’s opium-induced hallucinations, ecstasies, and torments. The work became a widespread sensation when it was serialized in the London Magazine in September and October of 1821. “Throughout the nineteenth century the work was viewed as having medical authority as a case history, and De Quincey was widely read in British and American medical circles” (ODNB). Its narrative, at once dreamlike and nightmarish, inspired the Romantics and Edgar Allan Poe, who used the Confessions as a model for “the fearful coloured into the horrible” (letter to Thomas W. White, April 30, 1835). It later laid the intellectual foundation for the modern drug literature of Cocteau, Burroughs, and the Beats.

Ashley II, p. 37; Norman 619. Very Good (Item #8142)