The Sheik belongs to a tradition of Orientalist romances by British writers that includes Lord Byron's 1813 poem The Giaour and Sir Richard Francis Burton's 1885 version of One Thousand and One Nights entitled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.[3] It also adheres to the major convention of the romance novel: the redemption of a 'lost' male by the power of a woman's love. Desert romance as a genre had been pioneered by writers like Robert Smythe Hichens and Kathlyn Rhodes, but The Sheik set off a major and influential revival of the form.[4]