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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
SHORTER NOVELS
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
RASSELAS—THE CASTLE OF
OTRANTO—VATHEK
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
INTRODUCTION
The three novels collected here all belong to the later yearsof the eighteenth century. The first represents what may becalled the last stand of Augustanism before that riot of fancyand imagination, as exemplified by the other two tales,that ushered in the Romantic Revival. Thus in Rasselas wehave Johnson, with the fortitude of Atlas, supporting themiseries of the world on his broad shoulders; Horace Walpoleshutting us up in his Castle of Otranto, away from reality andall reasonableness; and Beckford, in Vathek, transporting uson his magic carpet to the court of the grandson of Harounal Raschid, and thence to a region of perdition and eternalfire, where all memory of Augustanism is irretrievably lost.
They are strange company these three books, but they arenevertheless infallible indexes to the taste of their time. Thefact that Rasselas in 1759 met with such enormous successand that The Castle of Otranto four years later met withperhaps an equal success, indicates as plainly as anythingcould that although people had not lost their admiration forJohnson, they were already tiring of “good sense” and quitewilling to give free play to those wilder impulses in theirnatures that Augustanism had sought to discipline. Butthis time the tide turned with a vengeance! The graveWordsworth, a romantic himself, is found deploring the“frantic novels” of this time, although Shelley’s young andfiery imagination seized upon them with avidity, and, inZastrozzi, he wrote an even more frantic one himself. Butit was The Castle of Otranto, written in conscious reactionagainst the domesticities and sentiment of Richardson, withits plea that the material of the novel could be taken fromanything but...