William Beckford and the New Millennium (AMS Studies in the Eighteenth-century)

Review This collection comprises twelve critical studies on the manifold creative activities of William Beckford during a lifetime that stretched from 1760 to 1844. Beckford was a sensitive traveler able to discover and convey sympathies throughout Europe, but especially in France, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. He was a passionate and discriminating collector - of art, books, furnishings - and a patron of such artists as Alexander Cozens, John Robert Cozens, Philip James de Loutherbourg, Francis Danby, and Benjamin West. His creative vision in the areas of architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design has left heritages in Bath, Fonthill, Sintra, and Lisbon....He was a writer of unique creativity and vision, a writer too candid for his times, driven to the frank expression of his own sexuality....; The essays in this collection are arranged to reflect in rough chronology the stages of Beckford's creative life. Three essays focus on thresholds and three on Beckford's stylistic maturity in writing and vision in the Vathek period of the 1780s. Two essays draw from Beckford's experiences in Portugal, and three on the seasoned but not mellowed Beckford of Fonthill Abbey and Bath, the designing Beckford of landscapes and structures. The final essay closes the volume appropriately with cogent reflections on Beckford and millennia."" (From the Introduction)