James Justinian Morier, an English diplomat and writer, achieved renown during his lifetime chiefly for his imaginative Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824), based upon firsthand knowledge of Persian mores and culture. Although he is little known today, he was lauded by Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Sir Walter Scott for his artistry and storytelling and his ability to transmute his personal observations into his "Oriental romances," works which now are recognized as competent specimens of Romantic fiction. The English novelistic tradition in which Morier participated has a respectable lineage originating in the first English translation of the Arabian Nights (1705-1708). Anglicized with Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) and novels such as William Beckford's Vathek (1786), the vogue continued throughout the Romantic period with works such as Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810), George Gordon, Lord Byron's The Giaour (1813) and The Corsair (1814), and Thomas Moore's Lalla...