De Quincey’s experience with opium had begun while he was a student at the university, in 1804.  It was first taken to obtain relief from neuralgia, and his use of the drug did not at once become habitual.  During the period of residence at Grasmere, however, De Quincey became confirmed in the habit, and so thoroughly was he its victim that for a season his intellectual powers were well-nigh paralyzed; his mind sank under such a cloud of depression and gloom that his condition was pitiful in the extreme.  Just before his marriage, in 1816, De Quincey, by a vigorous effort, partially regained his self-control and succeeded in materially reducing his daily allowance of the drug; but in the following year he fell more deeply than ever under its baneful power, until in 1818-19 his consumption of opium was something almost incredible.  Thus he became truly enough the great English Opium-Eater, whose Confessions were later to fill a unique place in English literature.  It was finally the absolute need of bettering his financial condition that compelled De Quincey to shake off the shackles of his vice; this he practically accomplished, although perhaps he was never entirely free from the habit.  The event is coincident with the beginning of his career as a public writer.  In 1820 he became a man of letters.

As a professional writer it is to be noted that De Quincey was throughout a contributor to the periodicals.  With one or two exceptions all his works found their way to the public through the pages of the magazines, and he was associated as contributor with most of those that were prominent in his time.  From 1821 to 1825 we find him residing for the most part in London, and here his public career began.  It was De Quincey’s most distinctive work which first appeared.  The London Magazine, in its issue for September, 1821, contained the first paper of the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.  The novelty of the subject was sufficient to obtain for the new writer an interested hearing, and there was much discussion as to whether his apparent frankness was genuine or assumed.  All united in applause of the masterly style which distinguished the essay, also of the profundity and value of the interesting material it contained.  A second part was included in the magazine for October.  Other articles by the Opium-Eater followed, in which the wide scholarship of the author was abundantly shown, although the topics were of less general interest.

In 1826 De Quincey became an occasional contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, and this connection drew him to Edinburgh, where he remained, either in the city itself or in its vicinity, for the rest of his life.  The grotesquely humorous Essay on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts appeared in Blackwood’s in 1827.  In 1832 he published a series of articles on Roman History, entitled The Caesars.  It was in July, 1837, that the Revolt of the Tartars appeared; in 1840