12mo. [2], 205pp, [1]. Anthony Eden's copy, with his amorial bookplate to FEP. Contemporary dark green half-calf, tooled in gilt and blind, marbled paper boards, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece. Lightly rubbed and marked. Early. inked ownership inscription to head of title, scattered spotting.

A mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia edition of English novelist William Beckford's (1760-1844) Vathek. The novel, which remains his best-known literary work, relates the story of the Caliph Vathek and his journey to Eblis, or hell, together with the conjoined tales, or Episodes, being stories recounted to Vathek by those he meets in Eblis. Originally written in French, the book was translated into English by literary scholar Samuel Henley (1740-1815), who had been Beckford's editorial collaborator on earlier work; that edition, published in 1786, preceded the first edition in French by six months. Perhaps the most successful of the Oriental Tale genre, Beckford's Vathek fits squarely within the Gothic canon, ranking with Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho.

Provenance: From the recently dispersed library of Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British foreign secretary (1935-38, 1940-45, and 1951-55) and Prime Minister (1955-1957). Following active service in the First World War, Eden read Oriental languages at Oxford. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1923. In 1935 he was appointed foreign secretary, a position he resigned in 1938 to protest Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany. When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, he was named secretary of state for war, and later during the Second World War once more served as foreign secretary. Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955. In 1956, his failure to respond effectively during the Suez Crisis, and the subsequent loss of party and public support, would ultimately lead to his resignation from office in 1957. He was knighted in 1954 and created earl of Avon in 1961.