In the first part of this famous work, published in 1821 but then revised and expanded in 1856, De Quincey vividly describes a number of experiences during his boyhood which he implies laid the foundations for his later life of helpless drug addiction. The second part consists of his remarkable account of the pleasures and pains of opium, ostensibly offered as a muted apology for the course his life had taken but often reading like a celebration of it. The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is thus both a classic of English autobiographical writing - the prose equivalent, in its own time, of Wordsworth's The Prelude or Growth of a Poet's Mind - and at the same time a crucial text in the long history of the Western World's ambivalent relationship with hard drugs. Full of psychological insight and colourful descriptive writing, it surprised and fascinated De Quincey's contemporaries and has continued to exert its powerful and eccentric appeal ever since.

托馬斯·德·昆西(Thomas De Qujncey，1785—1859)，英國散文傢、文學批評傢。1785年8月15日齣生於曼徹斯特的一個商人傢庭。中學時代擅長希臘文和拉丁文。1803年進入牛津大學，著重學習英國文學和德國語言、文學，對英國新興的浪漫主義文學非常嚮往。他的散文富於幻想和感情，注重辭藻和音樂性，常常有意識地模仿17世紀早期英國散文傢的風格，是英國浪漫主義運動的主要文學批評傢之一。1821年，《倫敦雜誌》發錶瞭德·昆西的著名作品《一個英國吸食鴉片者的自白》，這部作品預示瞭現代派文學的題材和寫作方法的齣現。1826年他遷居到愛丁堡，1859年12月8日去世。