SCOTT, Jonathan.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Arabian Nights Entertainments, First edition, presented in smart contemporary bindings, of the earliest translation to include a critical introduction and extensive notes on Muslim culture. Two editions were issued by this publisher in 1811, Lowndes noting this more desirable larger format "post octavo, with plates by Smirke", and another, a smaller unillustrated "demy octavo".The editor was the English orientalist Jonathan Scott (1753-1829), who served in the army of the East India Company and was, for two years from 1783, Warren Hastings's private Persian secretary. Scott made a substantial revision of Antoine Galland's translation of 1704-17, the first in a Western language, and worked directly from the manuscript in the possession of Edward Wortley Montagu for the new stories that fill up Volume VI. Scott's translation was later the basis for bowdlerized editions intended for children.The illustrations after Robert Smirke, re-engraved for this edition, are taken from a series that he originally executed nearly a decade earlier and which first appeared in Edward Forster's translation of 1802. In 1806 they were exhibited at the British Institution.

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