Fantasy Anonymous: Arabian Nights. v1. 05 July 2025

[GrannyGrump]

Feeling the urge to get away from it all? No need to leave your easy chair — slip into this book, and visit other lands and other times.

Presented here, six of the best-loved tales from The Thousand and One Nights: “The Merchant and the Genie”, “The Caliph Haroun al Raschid”, “Aladdin”, “Ali Baba”, and “Sindbad the Sailor”. The latter three have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European adaptations.

This book is beautifully illustrated with 16 color plates and 20 B&W drawings; plus chapter decorations. Sterrett’s exquisite pictures transport us to magical landscapes.

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Hildegarde Hawthorne (September 25, 1871 – December 10, 1952) was an American writer of supernatural and ghost stories, a poet, and biographer. Continuing the lineage of a literary family, she was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne and eldest child of Julian Hawthorne.

The translator of this collection is not credited. However, the text appears to be based on the 1860 publication Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, a New Edition, Revised, with Notes by the Rev. Geo. Fyler Townsend, M.A. [1814 – 1900], which in turn is “mostly founded on the [1811] version of Dr. Jonathan Scott [1754 – 1829].”

Virginia Frances Sterrett was an American artist and illustrator who worked in the Art Nouveau tradition. Her work is fanciful, detailed and often compared to that of Kay Nielsen. Old French Fairy Tales was her first commission, swiftly followed by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (1921). In failing health, she was able to complete just one further commission prior to her death — her best-known work, considered to be her masterpiece, the suite of illustrations for Arabian Nights (1928).

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Readers interested in Ms. Sterrett’s art may enjoy other books she illustrated:
Tanglewood Tales
Old French Fairy Tales

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This book was first published in 1928.
This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.
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[GrannyGrump]

corrected links to other books.

[YuryYursky]

thanks GrannyGrumpy !

[HappyCalibreUser]

Beautiful! Thank you so much.