Opium and Romanticism

For the last year or so, the American opioid crisis has dominated headlines and killed several of our most beloved artists. The issue has become so prevalent so suddenly that the public has come to believe the the issue is somehow nuanced, or even completely turned on its head. However, a similar epidemic swept over a community a while back, that community being 19th century writers.

Indeed this was a crisis of opium, rather than opioids, but the crisis aspect still stands. This era killed, or greatly effected, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Shelly, Charles Dickens, and yes, Charles Baudelaire. In fact, there is an entire Wikipedia page named "Opium and Romanticism." Although Baudelaire's work sits in somewhat of a transitional period after romanticism, he maintained the tradition of laudanum, a powerful tincture of opium that was highly popular among 19th century writers. Although his keen interest and translation of "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" might be a hint, laudanum, along with other health and financial problems, ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of 46.