Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was born in Manchester, England, the son of a textile merchant. After his father’s early death, he was sent away to school, but he ran away to wander in North Wales and London. He later attended Oxford where he befriended Coleridge and William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The success of his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater launched him in a career as an essayist and critic. De Quincey’s work was widely admired, but he spent much of his life in poverty and debt until the last decade of his life.
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“Here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and pe... SEE MORE