";s:4:"text";s:1874:" Try Prime EN Hello, Sign in Account & Lists Sign in Account & Lists Returns & Orders Try Prime Cart. He also is renowned for having built Fonthill Abbey, the most sensational building of the English Gothic Revival. Vathek is an Arabian caliph whose reign is marked by turbulence and unrest. Vathek: by Beckford, William, 1760-1844. Vathek, William Beckford, Edited with an introduction by Roger Lonsdale, London: Oxford university press, 1970=1349, 187 Pages Vathek (alternatively titled Vathek, an Arabian Tale or The History of the Caliph Vathek) is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford. William Beckford, eccentric English dilettante, author of the Gothic novel Vathek (1786). Publication date [1922?] Considered a masterpiece of bizarre invention and sustained fantasy, Vathek was written in French in 1782 and was translated into English by the author’s friend the Rev. Publisher London : Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent Collection cdl; americana Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor University of California Libraries Language English "Notes": p. 197-[219] Addeddate 2008-03-04 04:17:15 Bookplateleaf 0006 Call number William Beckford: William Beckford (1760-1844), was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed at one stage in his life to be the richest commoner in England. Samuel Henley, who published it anonymously, claiming in the preface Vathek, Gothic novel by William Beckford, published in 1786. Skip to main content. William Beckford’s Vathek is a touchstone of eighteenth-century Orientalism and of the Gothic novel.