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8vo, pp. vii, [1], 334; the occasional mark, a few leaves slightly spotted, small marginal loss to title-page; but a very good copy, top-edge gilt, fore- and tail-edge uncut, in late nineteenth-century half brown morocco; bookplates of Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Bliss of Dumbarton Oaks to front pastedown.Scarce second edition in fact a reissue comprising the remainder sheets of the first edition of 1786 with a cancel title-page (printed by S. Gosnell) of Henley's English translation of Beckford's Gothic masterpiece, first published against the author's wishes and predating publication of the French original. Beckford wrote Vathek in French in 1782, completing the first draft in 'three days and two nights' in January, following a 'voluptuous' Christmas house party at Fonthill where the trappings of an Egyptian Hall with its 'infinitely varied apartments' provided inspiration for the Halls of Eblis. By May the novel was finished. Beckford encouraged first his tutor John Lettice and then his friend the Rev. Samuel Henley to prepare a version in English, but expressly forbade publication before the French text appeared. Henley nonetheless sent his translation to the press, and when it appeared in 1786 it was obvious that he had compounded his disobedience by implying that Vathek was translated from an Arabic source, with no mention of the author. Beckford, who was in Lausanne, was furious. He 'retaliated as best he could', hastily publishing the French original 'from a manuscript which he must have had with him, in a slightly earlier state than that translated by Henley' (Roger Lonsdale, citing the textual studies of Professor André Parreaux, who disproved the old theory that the Lausanne edition was retranslated from the English). Despite continuing close attentions to Vathek in French, Beckford produced no English version himself, although he finally consented to make some corrections to the third edition of Henley's translation. 'One can only assume that, failing satisfaction from Henley, Thomas Wildman, Beckford's solicitor, attacked Johnson the publisher, and at least secured for his client the balance of the [unsold sheets of the] original edition' (Chapman & Hodgkin). This explains the relative scarcity of this reissue: OCLC and Library Hub together record fourteen copies, at Yale, Georgetown, Northwestern, Southern Illinois, NYU, Columbia, Kentucky, UCLA, St Louis, McMaster, Toronto, Aberdeen, Cambridge, and the British Library. Provenance: With the bookplates of Mildred Bliss (née Barnes) and her husband, the diplomat, philanthropist, and art collector Robert Woods Bliss (1875 1962); the Blisses resided at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., where they established the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, which they gave to Harvard in 1940. Chapman & Hodgkin 3(A)(ii). Language: English.
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