(1785-1859) English author. His works include Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 1821 and the essays On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth 1823 and On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts 1827. He was a friend of the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Born in Manchester, De Quincey ran away from school there to wander and study in Wales. He then went to London, where he lived in extreme poverty but with the constant companionship of the young orphan Ann, of whom he writes in the Confessions. In 1803 he was reconciled to his guardians and was sent to university at Oxford, where his opium habit began. In 1809 he settled with the Wordsworths and Coleridge in the Lake District. He moved to Edinburgh 1828, where he eventually died. De Quincey’s work had a powerful influence on Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe among others. + prikaži više