Thomas De Quincey was an English author during the Romantic movement, associating with writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Best known for his command of the psychological fantasy story, De Quincey produced stories of the curious and obscure, but always with the traditional Romantic emphasis on feeling. His masterwork, «Confessions of an English Opium Eater» (1821), stemmed from his own laudanum addiction, and was followed by «Suspiria de Profundis», a collection of essays which continued to capture the same dark brilliance as in «Confessions». The collection was originally published in fragmentary form, and remained unfinished upon De Quincey's death in 1859. This edition includes «The Affliction of Childhood,» a reflection on the death of the author's two sisters in childhood, «Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow,» one of his best-known works about the Roman goddess of childbirth, and «The English Mail-Coach,» on the «grandeur and power» of the English mail-coach system.
