Modern Addiction Literature

I analyse relevant texts from the modern literary periods which have come to be widely considered as the exclusive realm of Addiction Literature, from the nineteenth century on. I consider the set of narrative tropes and linguistic conventions which distinguish a thematic mode of Addiction Literature. My hope with this chapter is to set up the position that the narrative and figurative features which have marked out works such as De Quincey’s Confessions (1821) and Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886) as supposedly seminal examples of Addiction Literature have a much older pedigree than is typically acknowledged.