In a letter dated from Geneva on 24 November 1777, William Beckford alludes quaintly to his "Centrical History," a youthful narrative fantasy that was then occupying his spare moments. Like almost all of his writings, this "Centrical History" is essentially a story about himself: the autobiographical impulse in Beckford's works invariably lies barely concealed beneath the opulent, iridescent surfaces of his prose. Robert Kiely, in his study of the Romantic novel, goes so far as to assert that "Beckford is the first of the romantic novelists whose subject is always and irrevocably himself." Unfortunately, this overwhelmingly biographical emphasis in Beckford criticism has tended to obscure the literary context of his writings, encouraging the assumption that the author's works, like his life, are utterly anomalous and eccentric. Students of the early novel are aware, however, that the house of eighteenth-century fiction has many mansions--a house in which even a writer as...