Thomas De Quincey’s ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ is the first of three memoir writings in the series of ‘Opium Confessions’ followed by ‘Suspira De Profundis’ and ‘The English Mail Coach’. I read all three of the confessions in this edition and honestly they caused me to fall into a bit of a physical reading slump; this book took me over a month to read and I intended to read it in the couple of days I spent in the Lake District in early November as such was the setting of many of De Quincey’s opium trips.

‘Confessions’ was a strong start, I enjoyed it and it was a well written memoir. I also discovered the word ‘tintinnabulous’ when reading such which is simply fantastic - it’s such a fun word. It was in the second and third confessions the book became confusing and dull. I struggled to grasp what was happening and De Quincey seemed to be talking of nothing much really, the third one basically just praising the invention of the mail coach. ‘Suspira De Profundis’ was more autobiographical but nonetheless very all over the place, and yet I didn’t in any of the sections really see much of the drug trip experiences and surreal hallucinations I expected from this book.