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Confessions of an English Opium Eater
- Narrated by: Thomas Witworth
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Confessions involve the listener in De Quincey's childhood and schooling, describing in detail his flight at age 16 from Manchester Grammar School, his wanderings in North Wales and London, and his experiences with opium, which began while he was a student at Oxford and developed into a lifelong dependency.
Said critic Grevel Lindop, "The drug that brings an 'assuaging balm' to the wounded heart extracts a price, alienating the hero from humanity and offering only intangible, though exalted, compensations."
Said De Quincey himself, when looking for relief from excruciating pain, "By accident I met a college acquaintance who recommended opium. Opium! Dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further: how unmeaning a sound it was at that time!"
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Alain de Botton has performed a stunning feat: He has transformed arcane philosophy into something accessible and entertaining, useful and kind. Drawing on the work of six of the world's most brilliant thinkers, de Botton has arranged a panoply of wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.
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Cheering, empathic, helpful
- By Austin on 11-11-09
By: Alain de Botton
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Vicar of Wakefield
- By: Oliver Goldsmith
- Narrated by: Patrick Tull
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The simple village vicar, Mr. Primrose, is living with his wife and six children in complete tranquility until unexpected calamities force them to weather one hilarious adventure after another. Goldsmith plays out this classic comedy of manners with a light, ironic touch that is irresistibly charming.
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Snidely Whiplash Ravishes Hapless Maidens
- By Joseph R on 12-26-09
By: Oliver Goldsmith
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The Confessions
- By: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 30 hrs
- Unabridged
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Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.
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Extraordinary in its ordinariness...
- By Varni-Maree on 08-28-12
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Looking Backward
- By: Edward Bellamy
- Narrated by: Edward Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The hero is anyone who has ever longed for escape to a better life. The time is tomorrow. The place is a Utopian America. This is the backdrop for Edward Bellamy's prophetic novel about a young Boston gentleman who is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from a world of war and want to a world of peace and plenty.
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This Book is socialist Propaganda
- By Paul on 04-26-04
By: Edward Bellamy
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler
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Charlotte Brontë
- A Fiery Heart
- By: Claire Harman
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.
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Clear-Eyed Bio of Literature's Most Elusive Figure
- By wally on 09-02-16
By: Claire Harman
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Lady Susan
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Susan McCarthy, Laurellee Westaway, Melissa Leventon, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in the then fashionable style form of letters between the characters in the book, Jane Austen tells the story of the beautiful widow Lady Susan. Lady Susan has an eye toward re-marrying well, and marrying off her teenage daughter. To achieve her objectives, she spins a tale of Victorian humor and manipulation. In the end, she outsmarts even herself. Jane Austen's earliest known serious work, Lady Susan is a short, epistolary novel that portrays a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction.
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Beware of the Introduction
- By Vincent on 08-08-14
By: Jane Austen
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Frankenstein
- By: Mary Shelley
- Narrated by: Dan Stevens
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Narrator Dan Stevens ( Downton Abbey) presents an uncanny performance of Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel, an epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.
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ARE WE ALWAYS TO BE UNHAPPY?
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 01-28-16
By: Mary Shelley
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
What listeners say about Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- "peter_herder"
- 12-02-23
Good narration outweighs bad sound quality
Sound quality is not great. I‘d expect more from a 1991 recording.
It’s very well narrated, though! The book is quite hard to read with its often long-winding sentences. But Thomas Witworth brings a lot of clarity to it.
Also the text itself is thoughtfully and tactfully added to for better understanding. E.g. filling in names or places that (at least in my edition) were blanks in the book.
All in all worth accepting the bad sound.
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- Rajeev A.
- 11-30-12
Shocking, I suppose, when it was first written.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
I'm glad I listened to this. The time went by quickly.
What did you like best about this story?
I liked the straightforwardness of De Quincey's description of his addiction.
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
I suppose the relative monotone of the narrator fit the straightforwardness of the message. I did sometimes wish the narrator had varied his delivery more, however.
Was Confessions of an English Opium Eater worth the listening time?
Yes. It was for me, because I had always wanted to 'read.' It's a short piece, so it goes quickly.
Any additional comments?
The sound quality was not of the best. Maybe it's not so much the narrator as the editor, but there were some skips.
The piece was probably shocking when it was first written. And what's interesting now is how De Quincey attempts to frame his addiction as a medical condition, which may have been a different approach back then. He humanizes his addiction, which may be a new thing for some readers.
De Quincey's prose style can be interesting. This was a new type of essay, apparently, and De Quincey was a forerunner of a certain type of 'personal essay.' I read the thing as much for that as anything and found it pretty much what I expected, over all. I enjoyed it and would probably enjoy it more a second time through.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Jordan
- 01-26-22
Classic Masterpiece…
Great book, but at times I could hear where they omitted parts of it, and that lead me to believe that it was either abridged or poorly edited. That’s why I gave it an overall 4-star rating, though it was performed well.
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- G. Benett
- 11-09-20
Heaven is a place on earth
Before Burroughs, before Will Self, there was the 19th-century addict and intellectual Thomas deQuincey. His Confessions are part memoir, part homage to his favorite drug, part cri de coeur. As befits an addict's autobiography, it's a wildly uneven ride. Much of it is boring. Much is ecstatic, and as one who enjoys the occasional opiate myself, I found those parts worth the price of admission (which, since the text is free and short, is pretty low). Some of deQuincey's musings bespeak a frustrated intelligence. His comments on Kant and the economic theorist Ricardo stand in complex dialectic with his hedonism. Whether this book is for you will depend largely on the value you assign euphoria. The reader is good, the audio mediocre.
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1 person found this helpful
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- WelshWolf
- 05-04-21
poor recording
The recording is very muffled at times making it difficult to understand words and entire sentences
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1 person found this helpful
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- Diane Challenor
- 11-23-11
Interesting story but doesn't hold my attention
This is an interesting story. I'm not sure I'll get through it. The story is interesting and so is the narration but I don't know that I'm all that interested in the ins and outs of opium eating. I selected it because its a very famous story and many people put it on their lists of must reads. So its selection is part of my desire to catch up on "famous" reads to see why the books are so famous. So far, the "famous" books I've attempted have not been able to hold my attention. I have the same problem with the "classics" so it's probably just me and not the book itself.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Grant
- 03-22-24
Long winded
The author’s manner of speaking is long winded and pompous. Didn’t make it past the first chapter.
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