The `Library Edition’ of the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night [12 VOLUMES]
Leonard C Smithers and translated by Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, London: H S Nicholas, 1897, 12 Volumes
Volume1: xxxii, 416 pages
Volume 2: viii, 431 pages
Volume 3: ix, 444 pages
Volume 4: x, 420 pages
Volume 5: viii, 400 pages
Volume 6: 408 pages
Volume 7: 406 pages
Volume 8: xii, 424 pages
Volume 9: xiii, 444 pages
Volume 10: xix, 479 pages
Volume 11: ix, 495 pages
Volume 12: xxiii, 399 pages
Illustrated with 71 gravure plates from paintings by Albert Letchford; printed tissue guards; original publisher’s half Morocco and green cloth boards, gilt decorated spines with 5 raised bands, title lettered directly to second panel, translator, and volume to fourth, Arabic script to first and sixth panels with knot work tool to third and fifth, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. "Library Edition" ["Kamashastra Edition" in gilt at foot of spines] (each)
10.25 x 6.25 in (25 x 15 cm) (each)
The 'Library Edition' of this masterpiece of world literature 'The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night'. This edition was edited by the friend of the translator Richard Burton, Leonard C Smithers. Published by H S Nichols and Co.
In contrast to the 1885 edition this one was the first to be published with the illustrations by Albert Letchfort. There are 71 illustrated plates in all the 12 volumes. Each volume with half title. With facsimiles of the 1885 edition's title pages bound in.
Richard Burton's translation of 'One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights' is his best-known work. The text is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales originally compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.
Richard Burton was one of the foremost linguists of his time, an explorer, poet, translator, ethnologist, and archaeologist, among other things. He also wrote the authoritative version of the now-famous Kama Sutra.
The Kama Shastra Society had a membership of two: Burton and 'Bunny' Arbuthnot, a close friend since their days in India in the 1850s and a fellow student of Hindu erotic literature. The Obscene Publications Act of 1857 applied only to publicly circulated material; the 'Society' circumvented its strictures, and its publications were anonymous. But it was short-lived, commencing with The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana and ending with Burton's death in 1890. The Benares (and later Cosmopoli) imprints were merely a ruse to conceal the proper place of publication.
NON-EXPORTABLE
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