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Beckford's Gothic novel Vathek, an Arabian tale, was originally written in French when the author was twenty-one. Published in English in 1786, it was one of the most successful of the oriental tales then in fashion. This edition makes available to a new generation of scholars and general readers, the originality of Beckford's ideas, and the excellence of his prose.

William Beckford’s Vathek is a touchstone of eighteenth-century Orientalism and of the Gothic novel. Beckford’s later work, The Episodes of Vathek, shares Vathek’s irreverent and decadent style, and an edition that unites the two has long been overdue. The Broadview edition includes a newly discovered early version of the first episode, never before in print, that centres on male-male love, as well as the previously published version that was re-written by Beckford as a heterosexual narrative. Based on the 1823 edition—the last one edited by the author himself—the Broadview Edition also introduces The Episodes in the order Beckford planned, and incorporates his final corrections.

The Gothic novel, which flourished from about 1765 until 1825, revels in the horrible and the supernatural, in suspense and exotic settings. This volume, with its erudite introduction by Mario Praz, presents three of the most celebrated Gothic novels: The Castle of Otranto, published pseudonymously in 1765, is one of the first of the genre and the most truly Gothic of the three. Vathek (1786), an oriental tale by an eccentric millionaire, exotically combines Gothic romanticism with the vivacity of The Arabian Nights and is a narrative tour de force. The story of Frankenstein (1818) and the monster he created is as spine-chilling today as it ever was; as in all Gothic novels, horror is the keynote.