De Quincey, << dih KWIHN see, >> Thomas (1785-1859), was an English essayist. He wrote a rare kind of imaginative prose that was highly ornate, full of subtle rhythms, and sensitive to the sound and arrangement of words. His prose was as much musical as literary in its style and structure and anticipated such modern narrative techniques as stream-of-consciousness.
De Quincey was born on Aug. 15, 1785, in Manchester. At the age of 19, he began taking opium to ease the pain of severe neuralgic headaches. He was addicted to the drug until he died on Dec. 8, 1859. He described his addiction in his most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821). The work’s biographical parts are important mainly as background for dreams De Quincey describes later. In these dreams he examined, with the help of opium, the intimate workings of the memory and subconscious.
De Quincey wrote other imaginative essays describing his visions under the influence of opium. They have a sense of fearful reality, as in “The Vision of Sudden Death” (part of the essay “The English Mail-Coach,” 1849). His critical essays include “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (1823), “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (1827), and “The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power” (1848). His other works include essays on writers of his time, such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Lamb.
