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Chapter V - The Oriental Tale of Terror -
Beckford
The Oriental story in France and England in the eighteenth century; Beckford's Vathek; Beckford's life and character; his literary
gifts; later Oriental tales.
Beckford's History of the Caliph
Vathek, which was written in
French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
temerity to publish the English version - described as a translation
from the Arabic - in 1786, before the original had appeared. The
French version was published in Lausanne and in Paris in 1787.
An
interest in Oriental literature had been awakened early in the
eighteenth century by Galland's epoch - making versions of The Arabian Nights (1704- 1717),
The Turkish Tales (1708) and The
Persian Tales (1714), which were all translated into English during
the reign of Queen Anne.
Many of the pseudo-translations of French
authors, such as Gueulette, who compiled The Chinese Tales, Mogul
Tales, Tartarian Tales, and Peruvian Tales, and Jean-Paul Bignon,
who presented The Adventures of Abdallah, were quickly turned into
English; and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that
didactic writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
philosophical reflection.
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