The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. ELEVEN VOLUMES OF TWELVE.
Burton, Sir Richard Francis (Translator).
Synopsis
This is by far the most widely celebrated of all Burton’s works. “As a monument of his Arabic learning and his encyclopaedic knowledge of Eastern life this was his greatest achievement. It is open to criticism in many ways; it is not so exact in scholarship, nor so faithful to its avowed text, as might be expected from his reputation; but it reveals a profound acquaintance with the vocabulary and customs of the Muslims, with their classical idiom as well as their vulgarised “Billingsgate”, with their philosophy and modes of thought as well as their most secret. . habits. Burton’s “anthropological notes”, embracing a wide field of pornography. . abound in valuable observations based upon long study of the manners and the writings of the Arabs. The translation itself is often marked by extraordinary resource and felicity in the exact reproduction of the sense of the original; Burton’s vocabulary was marvellously extensive, and he had a genius for hitting upon the right word. . . ” (Ency. Brit).