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 Nichols, 1894 (9 Volumes) and Benaras: Kamashastra Society,1886-88 (3 Volumes)

In 12 Volumes
Volume 1: xxxii, 416 pages; Supplemental Nights, printed by Benaras: Kamashastra Society, 1886
Volume 2: viii, 431 pages
Volume 3: ix, 444 pages; Supplemental Nights, printed by Benaras: Kamashastra Society, 1887
Volume 4: x, 420 pages
Volume 5: viii, 400 pages
Volume 6: 408 pages; Supplemental Nights, printed by Benaras: Kamashastra Society, 1888
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

Original cloth bindings with pictorial gilt stamping to the upper board and spine, top edges gilt (each)
10 x 6.25 in (25.5 x 16.2 cm) (each)

First Nichols and Smithers edition, also called 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.

This edition was published soon after Lady Burton's family edition and shortly before the illustrated library edition. This edition is of importance as it reinstates the text originally omitted by Lady Burton's edition. As stated in the preface, Smithers’ intention with the restoration was for this work to finally 'take its proper place on the library shelf alongside Cervantes and Shakespeare.' 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 Kamashastra 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 true place of publication.

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