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.

托马斯·德·昆西(Thomas De Qujncey，1785—1859)，英国散文家、文学批评家。1785年8月15日出生于曼彻斯特的一个商人家庭。中学时代擅长希腊文和拉丁文。1803年进入牛津大学，着重学习英国文学和德国语言、文学，对英国新兴的浪漫主义文学非常向往。他的散文富于幻想和感情，注重辞藻和音乐性，常常有意识地模仿17世纪早期英国散文家的风格，是英国浪漫主义运动的主要文学批评家之一。1821年，《伦敦杂志》发表了德·昆西的著名作品《一个英国吸食鸦片者的自白》，这部作品预示了现代派文学的题材和写作方法的出现。1826年他迁居到爱丁堡，1859年12月8日去世。