Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century / The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story; Vathek, an Arabian Tale

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Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side.
EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY
Founded 1906 by J. M. Dent (d. 1926) Edited by Ernest Rhys (d. 1946)
No. 856
FICTION
SHORTER NOVELS INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY PHILIP HENDERSON · IN 3 VOLS. VOL. 3 · EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
All rights reserved Type-set and bound in Great Britain at The Temple Press Letchworth and printed in Belgium by Drukkerij Omega Antwerp for J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Aldine House Bedford St. London First published in this edition 1903 Last reprinted 1948

The three novels collected here all belong to the later years of the eighteenth century. The first represents what may be called the last stand of Augustanism before that riot of fancy and imagination, as exemplified by the other two tales, that ushered in the Romantic Revival. Thus in Rasselas we have Johnson, with the fortitude of Atlas, supporting the miseries of the world on his broad shoulders; Horace Walpole shutting us up in his Castle of Otranto , away from reality and all reasonableness; and Beckford, in Vathek , transporting us on his magic carpet to the court of the grandson of Haroun al Raschid, and thence to a region of perdition and eternal fire, where all memory of Augustanism is irretrievably lost.