born Sept. 29, 1760, London, Eng.
died May 2, 1844, Bath, Somerset
English dilettante, novelist, and eccentric.
He is remembered for his gothic novel Vathek (1786), about an impious voluptuary who builds a tower so high that he challenges Muhammad in heaven and so brings about his own fall to the kingdom of the prince of darkness; though unevenly written, the story is full of invention and bizarre detail. Beckford and his family were forced to leave England for 10 years by a scandal involving a youth. On his return he built Fonthill Abbey, the most sensational building of the English Gothic Revival , whose own 270-ft (82-m) tower collapsed several times.