Vathek

A caliph builds a tower to see the stars, sells himself to a demon for the treasures of the pre-Adamite kings, and walks into hell with his eyes open. Beckford wrote it in French in three days at twenty-one, in the great house he had inherited with the largest fortune in England; Byron thought it unsurpassed. Fifty-eight plates, from Delacroix to John Webber, carry the tale's own weather: ruined a...