THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT.
A plain and literal translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments . . . With introduction, explanatory notes on the manners and customs of moslem men and a terminal essay upon the history of The Nights. Ten volumes, plus six volumes of SUPPLEMENTAL NIGHTS. With notes anthropological and explanatory. Together, 16 volumes, totalling approximately 6,000 pages, with 117 hand coloured plates with lettered tissue guards, the frontispiece to each volume painted on satin, title pages printed in red & black, errata slip before index in Volume X, appendices, indices; roy. 8vo; half red morocco, spines decorated in gilt compartments between raised bands, with gilt lettered crimson morocco title, author & volume labels, marbled papered boards, edges sometimes slightly rubbed; t.e.g., others uncut, occasionally partly unopened; a few volumes with ribbon markers; marbled endpapers; armorial bookplate of Clarence B. Hanson, Jr. on upper pastedowns, upper hinge starting Volume I and Supplemental Volume I, 2 plates bound upside down in Supplemental Volume III, several small edge chips or tears, a few leaves faintly creased, occasional slight soiling; printed by the Kamashastra Society for private subscribers only, n.p., n.d.[c. 190-]. Special set with watercolour illustrations; one of only two thus? Not recorded by Penzer. *The limitation page in the first volume states: 'This Special Copy is one of the "Original and First Edition" of Sir Richard F. Burton's "The Thousand Nights and a Night," and is illustrated with Water Colors done upon satin, as frontispieces to each of the sixteen volumes, and full-page Water Colors throughout the text, after the famous paintings and drawings by Albert Letchford and Stanley L. Wood. It is a fac-simile copy of that made for H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII) and of which there are only two copies of the kind in existence'. Richard Burton's translation was first published privately in Benares in 1885 (and the Supplemental Nights from 1886-88), in a limited edition of 1,000 by the 'Kamashastra Society' (founded by Burton and fellow Orientalist Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot 'for the printing of various Eastern works, chiefly of an erotic nature' [Penzer p. 161]). The first edition was unillustrated. In this set most of the plates are by Stanley L. Wood, with all frontispieces except that in Volume I by Albert Letchford, whose portrait of Burton follows the translator's preface in that volume. Letchford (1866-1905) was a friend of Burton, at whose suggestion he illustrated the Nights. 'He was first of all commissioned to paint sixty-five illustrations, but this number was subsequently increased to seventy, without counting a portrait of Burton himself. The work was all done at Naples, and some of the landscapes are taken from the surrounding country' [Penzer, p. 327]. Stanley L. Wood (1866-1928) illustrated an American edition of Burton's translation of the Nights in 1900-1901 (see Penzer p. 123), although many of his plates in this set are dated 1888 or 1889. The limitation statement implies this set has been bound from first edition sheets, but all title page versos are blank, and according to Penzer (p. 115): 'the verso of the title-page of the original differs from all the subsequent issues, as it has the name and date of the copyrighter'. The spelling of 'color' suggests this edition was produced in America, presumably between 1901-1910 [ie, during the reign of Edward VII]. Clarence Bloodworth Hanson, Jr. (1908-1983) was publisher of The Birmingham News and an avid book collector. Item #159810
Price: $20,000.00