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De Quincey, Thomas

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A great English prose writer, born in Manchester; son of a merchant called Quincey; his father dying, he was under a guardian, who put him to school, from which in the end he ran away, wandered about in Wales for a time, and by-and-by found his way to London; in 1803 was sent to Oxford, which in 1807 he left in disgust; it was here as an anodyne he took to opium, and acquired that habit which was the bane of his life; on leaving Oxford he went to Bath beside his mother, where he formed a connection by which he was introduced to Wordsworth and Southey, and led to settle to literary work at Grasmere, in the Lake District; here he wrote for the reviews and magazines, particularly Blackwood's , till in 1821 he went up to London and published his "Confessions" under the nom de plume of "The English Opium-Eater"; leaving Grasmere in 1828 he settled in Edinburgh, and at Polton, near Lasswade, where he died; is characterised by Stopford Brooke as "owing to the overlapping and involved melody of his style one of our best, as he is one of our most various miscellaneous writers"; he was a writer of very miscellaneous ability and acquirement (1785-1859).