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Prose Fiction and English Interest in the Near East, 1775–1825
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
One of the most important literary manifestations of that direct interest in the Near East which travellers and travel books created, appears in English prose fiction of the early nineteenth century. The prose fiction thus supplements the Near East poetry of Byron, Moore, Southey, and numerous minor versifiers as well as the travel books themselves, which may be considered a kind of minor literature. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century English readers had shown considerable interest in the Near East, particularly in the oriental tale; yet this interest was almost wholly indirect—the product of French accounts or French translations of the Arabian Nights. It was not until the last quarter of the century that new developments brought “the Orient much nearer to England than ever before … In letters, this modern spirit was first expressed by the increased number of travelers' accounts.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938
References
1 See my article, “The Popularity of English Travel Books about the Near East, 1775–1825,” PQ, xv (1936), 70–80.
2 I have traced some of these manifestations in: “Byron and English Interest in the Near East,” SP, xxxiv (1937), 55–64; and “English Travel Books and Minor Poetry about the Near East, 1775–1825,” PQ, xvi (1937), 249–271.
3 The Eclectic Review, for example, compares the work of the traveller favorably with that of the novelist as an “agreeable after dinner companion,” and specifically calls travel books a “class of literature”: N.S., xiv (Nov., 1820), 302.
4 See, for an adequate account of this subject, Martha P. Conant, The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1908), pp. 1–72.
5 Conant, op. cit., pp. 255–256.
6 Charles Johnstone, The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis (London, 1784), i, vi.
7 Johnstone, op. cit., i, vii.
8 Ibid., i, 1.
9 See, for example, Richard Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor (Oxford, 1775), and Travels in Greece (Oxford, 1776).
10 “Young Beckford was drawn by an irresistible attraction to all that was exotic, irregular, and high fantastical, and his abilities seemed every day further and further from finding an outlet in normal social directions”: J. W. Oliver, The Life of William Beckford (London, 1932), p. 10.
11 See Ibid., pp. 88–89.
12 Quoted in Oliver, op. cit., p. 91: see also the discussion of the origins of Vathek in Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill (New York, 1910), p. 142 f.
13 The Gentleman's Magazine, lvi (July, 1786), 594.
14 Quoted in Melville, op. cit., p. 143.
15 Isaac Disraeli, “Mejnoun and Leila,” in Romances (New York, 1803), pp. 69–70; cf. the travel-book description from which Disraeli probably took his own; James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh, 1790), iv, 553–556.
16 Disraeli, op. cit., p. 66.
17 Ibid., p. 103.
18 Lord John Russell, ed., The Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore (London, 1853–56), iii, 129.
19 Ibid., iii, 131.
20 Ibid., iii, 239.
21 Ibid., iii, 341.
22 Ibid., v, 46.
23 Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman (Edinburgh, 1871), pp. 1–2.
24 Thomas Hope, Anastatius or Memoirs of a Greek (London, 1836), i, 80–108.
25 Hope, op. cit., i, 219–221.
26 Ibid., i, 19–32.
27 Ibid., i, 227–245.
28 See, for example, Ibid., i, 224–225.
29 A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople … (London, 1812) and A Second Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople … (London, 1818).
30 “So accurate was his delineation of Persian life and character that the Persian minister at St. James is said to have remonstrated on behalf of his government with the plain-speaking and satire of ‘Hajji Baba’.” DNB, xxxix, 51.
31 Cf. the following contemporary comment on Morier's style: “The keeping of the assumed character appears to us perfect: the tone of the narrative is exclusively oriental, and the turn of expression in the numerous dialogues so appropriate that it is rarely possible to detect a thorough home-bred Anglicism in their form.” Quarterly Review, xxx (Oct., 1823), 201.
32 Eclectic Review, N.S., xxi (March, 1824), 341.
33 James Morier, The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (Paris, 1824), i, 113.
34 In the travel books about Persia (J. B. Frazier, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan; Sir John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia; Edward Scott Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, for example) these characteristics are repeatedly emphasized.
35 Morier, op. cit., iii, 257.
36 Eclectic Review, N.S., xxi (March, 1824), 341.