William Beckford - Vathek conte Arabe - 1928

Full title: "VATHEK Conte Arabe précédé de BECKFORD ou le Démon des Fables par G. JEAN-AUBRY." Limited edition Number 18/99 Scarce in dust wrapper. (In fact scarce at all, with only 99 copies printed). Original French edition, in dust wrapper. Although the title states 1928, the colophon dates this to March 1931 and says that the date of 1928 was the Oxford University publication. Barcham Green & Co paper. Top edge gilt - remaining edges rough cut. The dust wrapper is clean, with a little darkening to the spine. First French edition of the complete Vathek in its three episodes. The laid paper from the Barcham, Green & Co. paper mills (copy no. X). The type used here, for the first time in France, is that which the Reverend John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, had brought back from Holland in 1683. A couple of spots, and a tear to the front fold. loss of about 1 inch to the base of the wrapper. Now covered in archival acetate. The boards are clean and tidy, with a touch of darkening to the base of the spine (where the wrapper is missing) only. Overall an excellent copy. XXXI pp (introduction)-338 pp. 270 x 185 mm (10¾ x 7¼ inches). Vathek (alternatively titled "Vathek, an Arabian Tale" or "The History of the Caliph Vathek") is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford. It was composed in French beginning in 1782, and then translated into English by Reverend Samuel Henley in which form it was first published in 1786 without Beckford's name as "An Arabian Tale, From an Unpublished Manuscript", claiming to be translated directly from Arabic. The first French edition, titled simply as "Vathek", was published in December 1786 (postdated 1787). In the twentieth century some editions include The Episodes of Vathek (Vathek et ses épisodes), three related tales intended by Beckford to be so incorporated, but omitted from the original edition and published separately long after his death. Vathek capitalised on the eighteenth (and early nineteenth) century obsession with all things Oriental, which was inspired by Antoine Galland's translation of The Arabian Nights (itself retranslated, into English, in 1708). Beckford was also influenced by similar works from the French writer Voltaire. His originality lay in combining the popular Oriental elements with the Gothic stylings of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). The result stands alongside Walpole's novel and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in the first rank of early Gothic fiction.

Schätzpreis:€150

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