Emperor of Dreams
Drugs in the 19th century
Dedalus Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 7. November 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
254 pages
978-1-915568-84-7 (ISBN)
Description
The text of Emperors of Dreams has been revised, updated and with new material added, it paints a fresh and startling picture both of today's illicit drugs and of the nineteenth century in general.
Mike Jay's absorbing book focuses on drug use during a period when the boundaries of science were being swept back and the exploits of explorers like David Livingstone regularly made news. One of its key strength is the way Jay never loses sight of this intrepid spirit; Emperors of Dreams builds up 'a picture of the subjective world opened up by each drug' without ever making the subject dull. He also provides solid answers to some interesting questions. How did drugs, 'now all-pervasive multi-billion-dollar black-market phenomenon', first arrive in the modern world? Why are they so firmly associated with the 1960s counter-culture when, in 1900, 'any respectable person could walk into a chemist in Britain, Europe or America and choose from a range of cannabis tinctures or hashish pastes, either pure or premixed with
Mike Jay's absorbing book focuses on drug use during a period when the boundaries of science were being swept back and the exploits of explorers like David Livingstone regularly made news. One of its key strength is the way Jay never loses sight of this intrepid spirit; Emperors of Dreams builds up 'a picture of the subjective world opened up by each drug' without ever making the subject dull. He also provides solid answers to some interesting questions. How did drugs, 'now all-pervasive multi-billion-dollar black-market phenomenon', first arrive in the modern world? Why are they so firmly associated with the 1960s counter-culture when, in 1900, 'any respectable person could walk into a chemist in Britain, Europe or America and choose from a range of cannabis tinctures or hashish pastes, either pure or premixed with
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambs
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 126 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-915568-84-7 (9781915568847)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mike Jay is the author of Blue Tide: The Search for Soma (1999), an investigation into the use of sacred plant drugs in Indo-European prehistory. He is also the editor of Artificial Paradises (1999), an illustrated anthology of drug literature, and the co-editor of 1900 (1999), a collection of fin-de-siècle writings on evolution, decadence, atheism, the unconscious, feminism, sexology and futurism. He has written on the social history of drugs for various publications including The Guardian, The Independent, Arena, Fortean Times and the International Journal of Drug Policy.