biography
| name: |
Beckford, William Thomas
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1760–1844)
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| biography:
| Writer and art collector, born in Fonthill, Wiltshire, S England, UK. He was the son of William Beckford, twice Lord Mayor of London, who had inherited a vast fortune based on Jamaican sugar plantations. On his father's death (1770) the fortune passed to young William. From 1777 he spent much time on the European mainland, meeting Voltaire in 1778, and later making a grand tour in Flanders, Germany, and Italy, and collecting art treasures on a massive scale. He is best known for his Gothic novel, Vathek, which was published in France in 1787. In a life dogged by scandal, he married and had two daughters but also indulged in homosexual affairs which eventually caused him to be ostracized by society. In 1796, he proceeded to erect a neo-Gothic palace, Fonthill Abbey, designed by James Wyatt, where he lived in seclusion until 1822. |
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