Early nineteenth-century British poetry (1801-1822) showed an unprecedented interest in Islam and Muslims. This paper investigates the most important Orientalist poems of the early nineteenth century. Most of the poems discussed in this paper are long ones, usually dubbed epics by their own authors. Such are poems like Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer and Roderick: The Last of the Goths, Scott's The Vision of Don Roderick, Byron's The Giaour,Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and The Corsair: A Tale, and T. Moore's LallaRookh. Two shorter poems are discussed. These are Coleridge's ‘Mohammed: Mecca: Arabia', Shelley's Prologue to Hellas.
The paper shows that Islam was negatively presented by such poets. Almost all of the poems discussed show misinformation, accusations or prejudice against Islam and Muslims. Such inaccuracies and false claims about Islam and Muslims presented a distorted image of Islam and Muslims to European readers of the time.