The eccentric English author William Beckford published Vathek in 1786. Following Caliph Vathek, a greed-fueled Easterner on his quest for supernatural power, the story begins and ends with Vathek’s consuming desire for dark magic.
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Must-Read Horror Classics
Begin (or continue) your horror literature education with our list of the top 15 classic horror novels published before 1950.
“Vathek” by William Beckford (1786)
Full List
Must-Read Horror Classics
- “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole (1764)
- “Vathek” by William Beckford (1786)
- “The Mysteries of Udolpho” by Ann Radcliffe (1794)
- “The Monk: A Romance” by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)
- “Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley (1818)
- “Melmoth the Wanderer” by Charles Maturin (1820)
- “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
- “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde (1890)
- “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen (1894)
- “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (1897)
- “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James (1898)
- “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
- “At the Mountains of Madness” by H.P. Lovecraft (1936)
- “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
- “Conjure Wife” By Fritz Lieber (1943)