8vo. 311 pp., half-title, contemporary half-calf, title gilt on raised spine, marbled endpaper, upper edge gilt, minor spotting mainly on endpapers, paper edges slightly browned, faint remainder of previous owner’s inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise a good copy, Eugene Fasquelle, Editeur, Paris, 1926.

Synopsis

Limited and numbered edition of 600 copies of which this copy is numbered 454.
“Joseph-Charles Mardrus (1868-1949) was born in Cairo, where he received a thorough training in languages at the Jesuit college. He later studied medicine in Paris and practised as doctor for a while. He became well-known mainly for his translation and publication of ‘ A Thousand and One Nights’.
Mardrus received order to translate the Koran from the French government which planned to publish an “official Koran edition”. Although the translation was corrected in linguistic terms, the author did not care much about verses and verse numeration. On the contrary, he tried to emphasize the essential contents as extracts. Perhaps this was the reason why the book was only one edition.