Fantasy Anonymous (Burton Tr): The Thousand Nights and a Night, v.1, 29 September 2008

[Patricia]

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.
Translated and Annotated by Richard F. Burton
[Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton K.C.M.G. F.R.G.S. (1821–1890)]


This translation is not for children.

Richard Burton’s The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night was originally privately published by The Kama Shastra Society, in ten volumes, in 1885. This was a limited edition of 1000 copies (oddly, not 1001).
(A further six volumes were subsequently published as a Supplement to the Nights.)
This edition has used the online plain-text transcriptions from Project Gutenberg http://gutenberg.org, vols 1–10. These contain a number of errors, which I have tried to correct. Some undoubtedly remain.

Footnotes have been linked and collected at the end of the text. I have transliterated Greek characters, except from a line of Homer, which has been inserted as a picture.
I made the decision to insert line breaks within some couplets at the caesura. Unfortunately, few current electronic readers will display the whole line, so the caesura seemed the obvious place for a break. I have added some of the original artwork.
The file is about one and a half million words.


Edited to add:
I have replaced the original file with a better version which includes a cover by pdurrant.

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[pshrynk]

Happy happy! Joy joy!

[Patricia]

I did enjoy editing and converting it -mostly. Not when the technology plays up.

I may even have a go at the Six-volume Supplemental Nights.
But not just yet.

[Patricia]

I have replaced the original file (which had 30 downloads) with a better version, which includes pdurrant's cover.

[desertgrandma]

What a treasure of a book. Thank you.

[rlparker]

thanks!!

[Polyglot27]

Thanks Patricia for the great work. The hyperlinks to the chapters and notes are invaluable. However, just after I started reading, I found the equivalent of over two pages missing. I have the Burton Club reprint and the part missing is from the top of page 9 to the top of page 11(volume 1 of course) before where the poem begins. Also, by chance I picked up an OCR error while I was checking the missing part. The phrase "O my brother, and I reflected that thou art in years my senior..." had "respected" instead of "reflected" which is the correct word. This is just before the missing part.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

Thanks Patricia for the great work. The hyperlinks to the chapters and notes are invaluable. However, just after I started reading, I found the equivalent of over two pages missing. I have the Burton Club reprint and the part missing is from the top of page 9 to the top of page 11(volume 1 of course) before where the poem begins. Also, by chance I picked up an OCR error while I was checking the missing part. The phrase "O my brother, and I reflected that thou art in years my senior..." had "respected" instead of "reflected" which is the correct word. This is just before the missing part.

Thanks for this. I'll see about correcting the text.

[Polyglot27]

Sorry for asking this dumb question. Is there an easy way to edit a prc file. Maybe I could help in correcting the errors if it is not too difficult to do.

[Patricia]

Sorry about the delay. I've managed to find a scan of the first volume, and will sit down and do a comparison, so as to restore missing passages. I should be able to get it done by Tuesday . (I've been a bit busy lately.)

[pshrynk]

Is it done yet?

[pshrynk]

How about now?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

How about now?

Go play with VR, he has some bacon.....

[quebecotr]

Thank you for all your work ! I can't wait to read this book. I read these tales as a child, and I'd love to see the original English materials.

Hats off to you !

[elena]

I have some problems:
"table of contents" and "start reading" from the Contents menu in mobipocket desktop reader don't work. I didn't try them on the reader, yet. Also, notes in the text don't link to the notes at the end of the book.