Drugs and Art-Thomas De Quincey and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Pages:45-47
Kamlesh and Prem Prakash Khatri (Department of English, Singhania University Pacheri Beri, Jhunjunu, Rajasthan)

Since when was genius found respectable? It passes in its place, indeed-which means The seventh floor back, or else the hospital Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856)1 (Book VI, lines 275-7)1 IN 1856, two extraordinary words were published, Elizabeth Barrett Browning long narrative poem Aurora Leigh, and Thomas De Quincy’s revised and greatly enlarged Confessions. Both were considered to be autobiographical, both were written by users of opium, and both were phenomenally successful. Which word has been the more influential is difficult to assess, for they are as different in subject and approach as the works of Sterne and Sartre which were paired’ earlier in this series of essays. Until recently, the shadow cast by Thomas De Quincy’s would have been judged the longer, even if the greatest evidence of genius in his word could be said to reside in the inspired choice of title: Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Now though, the reading of Aurora Leigh with a late twentieth century mind leads to the conviction that it deserves to be seen as much the more important word of the two.