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.