From Publishers Weekly
A smoothly guided tour through the history of this often glamorized narcotic, Hodgson's slim volume is handsomely assembled and illustrated with woodcuts, sketches and photographs. It recounts how 19th- and 20th-century writers (among them Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau and Graham Greene) "elevated opium...to the status of a muse"; demonstrates "the box-office draw of drugs" in the era of silent film; describes the "opium clippers," sleek Victorian ships designed to transport the drug from India to China; and surveys the multifarious literature of opium-smoking, from firsthand reports of Hong Kong squalor to prurient pulp fiction. Opium was a popular ingredient in all sorts of Victorian and turn-of-the-century medicines. But since most North America opium smokers were Chinese immigrants, the drug provided an occasion for moral panic and anti-immigrant feeling. Far less ambitious and less didactic than Martin Booth's 1998 Opium: A History, Hodgson's volume excels in its plethora of quotes from Dickens, Sax Rohmer and Arthur Symons (represented by a remarkable sonnet), pictures from obscure yet revealing French painters, Chinese photographers and documentation of crusaders and journalists such as P.B. Doesticks, who visited an opium den in New York City's Chinatown and found "a cube of smoke the size of the apartment, about the consistence [sic] of blancmange." (Sept..
- of blancmange." (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Farewell to smiles and laughter, farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and the blessed consolations of sleep!" So Thomas De Quincey wrote in "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" in 1822. He was among the first of many writers, artists and musicians who found themselves addicted to opium. In "Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon," Barbara Hodgson chronicles the effects the narcotic had, both positive and negative, on many of the artistic lights of the 19th century. Who also analyzes the drug's effect on the general population of China, India, Britain, France and the United States. In fact, the economies of both Britain and France were so dependant on the opium trade that when China tried to stop it, the European powers made war in 1839 and again in 1856. Hodgson, the author and designer of two illustrated novels, "The Sensualist" and the "The Tattooed Map," intersperses photographs and woodcuts of addicts in opium dens throughout the book. She also includes movie stills and reproductions of the covers from magazines and books to highlight the strange fascination opium has exerted on our culture. Of special note is the cover a 1958 editions of Claude Farrere's 1904 novel "Black Opium"; it features a naked, voluptuous blonde rising out of the smoke of an opium pipe. The images is both absurd and sad, for opium use decreases the sex drive. But then again, as Hodgson notes in her insightful book, the pull of the drug is anything but logical. -- The New York Times
In the Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West wanted to knock Dorothy, the scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion out of commission, she knew exactly what to do. "Poppies," she said, holding poison over her crystal ball as she cast a spell, "poppies...poppies will put them to sleep." Sure enough, in the next scene, Dorothy and her companions encountered a lush field of the ostensibly harmless flowers, and in no time, all of them-even furry little Toto-were snoozing like babies. The subtext of this episode is not so subtle validation of the seductively soporific effects of the poppy known as papaver somniferum, and its notorious derivative, opium: one of nature's most pleasurable and addictive narcotics. In the richly illustrated Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon, Canadian born author Barbara Hodgson brings this fascinating and frightening substance vividly to life. Long before "heroin chic" made its way into the fashion vernacular, images of smoky dens filled with inert, glazed-eyed, pipe-sucking opium addicts were the stuff of legend. Indeed, from its introduction to the West via China in the 1850's, through literary works such as Thomas De Quincey's 1821 memoir Confessions of an English Opium Eater, to today's eponymous Yves Saint Laurent perfume, opium-whether ingested as morphine, laudanum, heroin, or another of its many incarnations has never gone out of style. -- Detour
About the Author
Barbara Hodgson is a Vancouver-based writer whose most recent novel, The Sensualist, has received widespread critical acclaim. She is also author of The Tattooed Map and collaborated with Karen Elizabeth Gordon and Nick Bantock on Paris Out of Hand.
