Vathek

A captivating hybrid of Gothic, oriental, and satiric fiction, Vathek documents the fall of Vathek, whose obsessive quest for knowledge, pleasure and power leads to his eventual damnation. An extraordinary fantasy, the novel has influenced writers from Byron to Lovecraft. This new edition combines a definitive text with new introduction and notes.

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.