1930 Rare Book - Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by De Quincey. First Illustrated Edition by Sonia Woolf.
Author: Thomas De Quincey. (Sonia Woolf, illustrator).
Title: The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Followed by Dreams and Fantasies. With Illustrations and Decorations by Sonia Woolf.
Publisher: London, John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd., New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1930. First Illustrated Edition by Sonia Woolf.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 9.5 " X 6.5 ".
Pages : xix-304 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good half leather binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown, marbled paper boards with a few chips and scratches - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. Upper edge gilt.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the frontispiece and 11 nice full-page illustrations by Sonia Woolf.
The book: An attractively bound edition of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) -- an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight..." Here in a First Illustrated Edition by Sonia Woolf.
The illustrator: Sonia Woolf was a Manchester painter and illustrator who is well known for her impressionistic and sometimes erotic black and white illustrations for this beautiful book.
The author: Thomas Penson De Quincey (15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work, De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West.