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Emperors of Dreams : Drugs in the 19th century
Author: Mike Jay
Cover design: David Bird
Coleridge and de Quincey swilling bitter draughts of laudanum, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes dallying with cocaine, Baudelaire and Gautier rapt in hashish fantasies behind velvet curtains, even Queen Victoria swallowing her prescription dose of cannabis - these snapshot images are familiar, but what is the story which lies behind them? How did cannabis and cocaine, opium and ether, mushrooms and mescaline enter the worlds of nineteenth century Britain, Europe and America, and what was their impact on the century?s dreams and nightmares?
Emperors of Dreams paints a fresh and startling picture both of today?s illicit drugs and of the nineteenth century in general. It shows that the age of Empire and Victorian values was awash with drugs, and traces their course through the rapidly evolving arenas of science and colonial expansion and the demimondes of popular subculture and literary fashion, putting into context the drug habits and references of writers as diverse as Coleridge, de Quincey, Baudelaire, Dumas, Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, William James and Sigmund Freud.
Reviews
- W.N.Herbert in Scotland on Sunday
- Peter Carty in Time Out
- Julian Keeling in The New Statesman and Society
- Joan Smith in The Independent on Sunday
- Gary Lachman in The Fortean Times
- Pick of the Week by Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian
- Marek Kohn in The Independent
- The Scotsman
- Dr Roy Porter in The Times Higher Education Supplement
- Counter Productions
- Fergus Crow in The Latest Magazine
- Bizarre Magazine
- Arts world
- Paul Flynn MP in The House of Commons as reported in Hansard for 2 February 2001.
- Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski in The Independent on Sunday
- Chris Hirst in The Independent
RRP: £9.99
No. of pages: 277
Publication date: 23 November, 2000
Re-print date: 18 February, 2004
Catalogue/ISBN no: ISBN 1 873982 48 8
Rights: Dedalus World Rights
Rights sold: Russia(Adaptec Company/T-ough Press)
Buy from: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com