Important Notice

Leonard C Smithers and translated by Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, London: H S Nicholas, 1894 (9 Volumes) and Benaras Kamashastra Society, 1886-88 (3 Volumes)

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)

In 12 Volumes
Volume1: 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

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 in the restoration was so that this work can 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 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 true place of publication.

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