Large 8vo. original black cloth, each volume with elaborate gilt Arabic design on front covers, title printed in Arabic on each front cover ‘Alf Layla Wa Layla’, top edge gilt, the name of Richard Burton ‘Al Hajj Abdallah’ on spine, VOLUME ELEVEN is missing, spine extremities rubbed, with extremities of volume 1 damaged, translated from the Arabic by Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, reprinted from the original edition & edited by Leonard Smithers, illustrated by a series of 71 original illustrations, reproduced from the original pictures in oils specially painted by Albert Letchford, bookplate of John A Caman verso front cover of volume 1, Library edition, H. S. Nichols Ltd, London, 1894.

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).