Thomas Penson De Quincey (1785 - 1859) was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). By his own testimony, De Quincey first used opium in 1804 to relieve his neuralgia; he used it for pleasure, but no more than weekly, through 1812. It was in 1813 that he first commenced daily usage, in response to illness and his grief over the death of Wordsworth's young daughter Catherine. In the periods of 1813-16 and 1817-19 his daily dose was very high, and resulted in the sufferings recounted in the final sections of his Confessions. His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Charles Baudelaire and Nikolai Gogol. In this book: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc The Caesars Miscellaneous Essays Memorials and Other Papers