Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Click to enlarge

Print Price: $13.50

Format:
Paperback
192 pp.
129 mm x 196 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199576951

Publication date:
August 2013

Imprint: OUP UK

Vathek

Second Edition

William Beckford
Edited by Thomas Keymer

Series : Oxford World's Classics

'Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant; and to undertake that which surpasseth his power!'

The Caliph Vathek is dissolute and debauched, and hungry for knowledge. When the mysterious Giaour offers him boundless treasure and unrivalled power he is willing to sacrifice his god, the lives of innocent children, and his own soul to satisfy his obsession. Vathek's extraordinary journey to the subterranean palace of Eblis, and the terrifying fate that there awaits him, is a captivating tale of magic and oriental fantasy, sudden violence and corrupted love, whose mix of moral fable, grotesque comedy, and evocative beauty defies classification. Originally written by Beckford in French at the age of only 21, its dreamlike qualities have influenced writers from Byron to H. P. Lovecraft.

This new edition reprints Beckford's authorized English text of 1816 with its elaborate and entertaining notes. In his new introduction Thomas Keymer examines the novel's relations to a range of literary genres and cultural contexts.

Readership : Readers of classic fiction, especially Gothic and fantasy literature; students of eighteenth-century literature, the eighteenth-century novel, Gothic, oriental fiction, Romanticism. Also courses on gender studies/queer theory, postcolonialism, fantasy literature.

There is no Table of Contents available at this time.

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Thomas Keymer has edited Oxford World's Classics editions of Johnson's Rasselas, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Shamela. He is the author of numerous critical essays and books, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (2009) and co-editor, with Jon Mee, of The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to 1830.

There are no related titles available at this time.

Special Features

One of the strangest and most unforgettable eighteenth-century novels, Vathek's tale of the Caliph's obsessive quest for knowledge, and his eternal damnation, is a wild Gothic fantasy whose sensuous imagination and grotesque comedy have inspired writers from Byron to Lovecraft.
New introduction by Thomas Keymer pays special attention to the novel's literary qualities, its hybrid nature and its connections with oriental fiction and the Gothic, in a culturally broad context, as well as to its origins and Beckford's scandalous public persona.
Includes selections from the important original annotations in the lifetime editions of 1786 and 1816 as well as new modern notes.
Comprehensive bibliography.
The most critically up-to-date and accessible edition, and a founding text of modern fantasy literature.

New to this Edition

Introduction by Thomas Keymer.
New, fuller notes.
Up-to-date bibliography.
New chronology of the author.
Reset text.