Publisher's Synopsis
begins with a notice "To the Reader", to establish the narrative frame: "I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life" It is followed by the substance of Part I, Preliminary Confessions, devoted to the author's childhood and youth, and concentrated upon the emotional and psychological factors that underlay the later opium experiences especially the period in his late teens that De Quincey spent as a homeless runaway in Oxford Street in London in 1802 and 1803.A relatively brief introduction and connecting passage, followed byThe Pleasures of Opium, which discusses the early and largely positive phase of the author's experience with the drug, from 1804 until 1812;Introduction to the Pains of Opium, which delivers a second instalment ofautobiography, taking De Quincey from youth to maturity; andThe Pains of Opium, which recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience, with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms
