Opium Use in Nineteenth Century British Literature

The use of opium has occurred for thousands of years throughout the world. The images and dreams induced by the opium poppy have inspired artists and been the subject of their works for centuries. In British culture writers were influenced by the effects of opium and its more socially-acceptable medicinal form, laudanum. Made infamous by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's preface to "Kubla Khan," the utilization of opium was included in many other British writings, most substantially influencing Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." Opium culture and fascination with the exotic also appeared in the works of such renowned authors as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, showing how deeply the poppy penetrated British society.