Thomas de Quincey (August 15, 1785 – December 8, 1859) was an English essayist best known for Confessions of an English Opium-eater.  He was born in Manchester. His father, Thomas Quincey, a successful merchant, died when he was eight. Three years after his father’s death, his mother, an intelligent but strict parent, adapted the name to de Quincey, moved the family to Bath, and enrolled Thomas in King Edward School and later in Manchester Grammar School to prepare him for Oxford.  Deeply influenced by Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, he left halfway through to seek him out, failed, and returned home before setting off on a solitary walking tour through Wales with the support of his uncle.  He lost touch with his family, became destitute, and made his way to London, where he lived hand to mouth before being discovered by friends and returned to his family.  He enrolled at Oxford, where he began to use laudanum, probably to relieve symptoms of neuralgia and other ailments, and earned a reputation as a strange and solitary figure. He completed his studies but failed to take his final oral exams, leaving without a degree. He got to know Wordsworth and Coleridge, came into a small inheritance, settled in the Lake District and married in 1816.  As his money ran out he took to journalism, working as an editor, translator and essayist.  Confessions earned him recognition in his mid-thirties, and he remained a frequent and prodigious contributor to periodicals for the remainder of his life.