The Arabian Nights; Volume 1 of 16

The Arabian Nights #1 of 16

by Richard Francis Burton, Anonymous

The first volume of the classic collection of Middle Eastern stories, including "Tale of the Three Apples" and "Tale of the Trader and the Jinni."

To be chosen by King Shahriyar as a wife was a death sentence. After a single night of marriage, he executed each of his wives. So when Scheherazade was picked, she knew her time on Earth had reached its end--unless she could hold the king's interest. To that end, each night she spun a new enchanting, erotic, mesmerizing tale, always keeping the king guessing as to its conclusion--and sparing her life for another thousand and one nights.

The first volume of this collection, translated by the renowned British explorer Sir Richard Burton, begins the stories that Scheherazade told . . .

Genres: Classics, Fantasy, Fiction, Mythology, Fairy Tales, Adventure, Short Stories

465 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2015

About the author

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's adaptation), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information.

He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Santos, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886.

Reviews

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

It Looks like i actually finished this first volume long long ago?!
It ends with the 34th night, and i am in the 53rd night!
I am reading a version that contains the first 10 volumes, but i prefer making volume by volume reviews, Because making a review for 5000 pages seems nuts to me!
So I read the forward of this translation by Richard Burton, I read 3 Missing tales from the Arabic version, and 1 cut scene from the Arabic version that i ll mention near the end of the review for interested future Arab readers, who might be on the look out for the missing tales like i am.
Also I did read and share a myriad of Poetry from this version, i was interested at times at how Richard burton will beautifully weave translated Arabic poems like a complete and utter genius.

When drew she near to bid adieu with heart unstrung.
While care and longing on that day her bosom wrung
Wet pearls she wept and mine like red carnelians rolled
And, joined in sad riviere, around her neck they hung.

I honestly thought with translations, that i was going to have an easy time reading this version of the nights, and i did, i understood the majority of it, and i was running on excitement fuel to read the Arabian Nights again finally.
But then came the Arabian Nights itself, and even though i read it before, even though i am familiar with most of the weird Islamic sentences, and i am familiar with our own expressions, which the writer is really sticking with beautifully.
It dawned on me, there is way too many words, that i know by heart in Arabic, but i don't know the equivalent to them in English, and this was going to be needlessly tiring, just for the simple fact, That i Own a Semi-Complete Hardcover, Beautiful Arabic Version of the book, i wanted to reread it in a different language, as i didn't finish it the first time, due to veering to a rare epic that i had borrowed back then.
But it was tough, so i just decided to DNF and read the Arabic instead, a plan i abandoned fast, because the Arabic version is missing Entire Tales, so I come back again to this, and boy oh boy was i glad.

I speak and longing love upties me and unties me
Till with honey dew of inner lip she plies me.
I brought the chess board and my liefest lover plays me
With white and black, but black cum white ne'er satisfies me: 'Twas as if king for castle i were fain to place me
Till wilful loss of game atwixt two queens surprise me.
And if I seek to read intent in eyes that eye me
Oh man! that glance askance with hint of wish defies me.

You know its a grim idea, to be telling tales, just to keep being alive.
But isn't that in reality what all Starving artists might feel?
To keep producing art, just to stay alive, for the hope of making it Big?
Was this how the original Writer of the Arabian Nights felt?
He probably was telling these tales to a king one at a time
While Fear of Death might not be Involved, All Starving Artists are Scheherazade.
Most probably for modern reader reading the Arabian Nights, they need to get over all the ugliness, we got through Game Of Thrones when it was full of slavery, and bigotry, and sexism, Racism, and so on, because it was a fantasy world?
In The Arabian Nights while its fantasy tales, they really deliver to us a historical accurate retelling of How Muslims lived when lived in 7th to 13th century maybe even further since the world at that time changed at a very slow pace, their fights with Christians, The Slavery that was rampant in the entire world, and many other, Ugly Misfortunate things that we are so lucky as humans to have overcome and removed from our world as best we can.
If You can Manage to exclude yourself from all that somehow, and enjoy the tales, while often frowning on things we have made better, then by all means, its one of the most enjoyable old literature works in the world.
Reading The Arabian Nights while amusing to no limit at times.
At other times its really emotional, i was reading and tears are running down my face.
There is many stories of hardships, and severance between loved ones for years, not just Lovers, sometimes sons and fathers, or mothers, and daughters.
At points they come really close to finding each other, but it doesn't happen, till its finally time and they get together.

Round with bit and little, the bowl and cup.
Take either than moon in his sheen hath crowned.
Nor drink without music, for oft I've seen.
The horse drink best to the whistle's sound.

I really liked the part about the horse, and using that as reasoning that drinking wine would be better while listening to music, it's also insane the sheer number of Arabic poetry about drinking wine, when it has always been forbidden for Muslims, But as in every religion different places different times, Different people, You get people breaking the mold, who are not necessary even against their religion, and would defend it with all their powers!
Also like most Old Epics, There is magic involved, they really did believe in magic, and when magic is real, magical relics and items and talismans are present!
Like this magic bead idea is amazing, feels like something a loving mother or father would create, If you put them around your child's neck they will never come to harm or get any fever or other disease! (Also its from the next volume but let's just pack this review full of goodies)

None other charms but thine shall greet mine eyes,
Nor other image can my heart surprise:
Thy love, my lady, captives all my thoughts
And on that love I'll die and I'll arise.

I Will start a comparison between English versions here, after my research, i found two versions, there are more abridged and older versions that are just not up to bar.
We Have Richard Burton version which i choose to read after arduous research, and There is Malcom Version.
The poetry : Richard writes actual poetry that pretty much resembles Old Arabic poetry, that rhymes and that are true to their intended meaning.
Malcom writes poetry that are just words put side by side, no rhyming no effort to make it aesthetically pleasant to the ear and the eye of the beholder.
Language : Richard Burton uses a mix of Archaic English (Like Shakespeare just not all the darn time) and he uses certain unique Arabic words (that he explains their meaning in notes), to familiarize his readers with Old Arabia, so you will probably know about Old Arabia more than most current Arabs because we need to read to be familiar with it, and reading isn't as popular here as it should be.
Malcom His entire reasoning for translating the Night again in the first place, was to actually just make it easier to read, and with modern English.
Completionist : This was the deciding factor for me that i was not going to read Malcom version even if i was paid money to do so!
Richard Burton had 3 missing full tales and 1 scene that were not even present in the Arabic version, because he is collecting the two most complete Arabic versions in one Epic tale, and it doesn't even look like it doesn't fit, no it fits perfectly like they were always meant to be that way.
Malcom he didn't, he actually had the advantage of a great Arabian Nights fanatic like Richard burton translating and collecting the work before him, and he still didn't translate the missing tales!
Culture : Richard Burton kept The Arabian Nights true to their roots, an Islamic Epic Literature for the ages, and you have to understand i am an atheist and i still prefer to see it this way, even if no Muslim in the world hates me (they don't Quite a few like and support me) i would still like The Arabian Nights to be that way.
Malcom from the parts i have browsed seems to have just cut that out entirely, and this could be a deciding factor for someone who wouldn't like seeing Religious aspects in literature, even if it was mutilating An Epic work like this that has effected generations and generations of Entertainment Movie TV series, Video games, Novels and books!
Now for the final part for Future Arab readers who might read this, i will not be telling you The exact page numbers of the missing tales, but i will tell you their names to find them easier.
1 - The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot.
2 - The Tale of the Envier and the Envied.
3 - The Third Kalandar’s Tale. (This was not completely missing, but you will notice a glaring abrupt cut, which turns out to be a huge part of the tale that make it coherent and beautiful and one of the best tales in this volume)
The missing scene is actually from the Next volume so i ll mention that when the time comes.
I hope my review helps someone find their way To the Arabian Nights, or just entertain them with my experience.

Better ye abide and i take my leave
For what eye sees not
Heart shall never grieve.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossibly rich,, impossibly imaginative, one of the great treasure chests of world literature. It reveals a vast, densely populated hallucinatory landscape, the hallucinations being those of 8th-11th century Islam. The earliest group of stories were strung together in the 8th century and were probably all from India and Persia. In the 10th century, probably in Iraq, the first Arab stories were added, and as the collection expanded, the earliest stories also became Arabic in detail. By the 17th century, there were indeed a thousand and one stories.

And that's the problem. Reading more than 150 pages of the book uninterrupted is like living on foie gras. It's too rich. Eventually the senses are numbed and the wonders become commonplace. The only way I could actually get through it was to put it down for weeks and then devour it for days.

I can't honestly say that the overall aesthetic experience would be much different for someone who stopped at 350 stories, although there are individual tales later in the collection I would have hated to have missed.

There's no mistaking, by the way, the Islamic view of relations between the sexes. Women are clearly subordinate, beheaded in a whim, and sexually aggressive women are presented as monsters of nature, and yet Scheherazade herself is one of many clever women whom the narrative celebrates -- women who can thread the very fine needle that will allow them to be true to themselves.

I'm very glad I read it, and in the Burton translation, which I enjoyed very much, but I know as a certainty that I'll never read it straight through again.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 3: I've read 15 volumes, only 2 left. Strangely, the two most famous tales from the Nights, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, are not in Richard Burton's "official canon" but are rather in the supplemental volumes, in several versions by different translators.

Update 2: I have finished the first ten volumes, the actually 1,001 Nights. It's amusing that the translator, Sir Richard Burton, waits until the TERMINAL essay to reveal the superstition that whoever reads the Arabian Nights in their entirety will die (presumably shortly thereafter) – maybe I would have skipped one if he’d said so in the beginning! In any case, I am now on the first of seven volumes of Supplemental Tales that, for whatever reason, did not become part of the canonical Thousand Nights and a Night.

Update: just finished volume five. Only 12 to go! Great fun.

Yes, this one's going to take a long time to finish! I'm actually reading a 17 volume edition and I am on volume one. Wow -- there's a reason these stories are so famous. Lots of handsome young princes and gorgeous princesses, genies, sultans, etc. and wild and intricate adventures. Burton's notes on Arabic vocabulary and customs are highly entertaining, both informative and filled with his sometimes dated, sometimes bigoted, and sometimes right-on-the-money opinions.

[kingshearte · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I learned from this book is that pretty much all women are deceitful whores, many of them are also witches, and they should all be put to death. As you can imagine, this message grew tiresome, and eventually, I decided I'd had enough. I only made it to somewhere in the vicinity of Night 20, but the misogyny and racism (most of the women in question cheated with "hideous blackamoor slaves") was just too much. I am often willing to make certain allowances for time and place, but only up to a point, and there better be enough literary value (either in style or the story itself) to make up for it. The style of this one is hard to judge, because it is, of course, a translation. Maybe, if I could read it in the original language, I'd be more enamoured with its stylistic value, but as it was, I didn't find anything particularly stylistically noteworthy in this translation. He did a decent job with the poetry (at least as far as following structural conventions, devising rhyming schemes that work in English, and creating verses that do sound like poetry — can't speak to how they compare to the originals), but even that, sprinkled as liberally through the stories as it was, started to annoy me, as it didn't really add anything to the plot. I'd be lying if I said I didn't start skipping them. The rest of it just didn't do much for me. Maybe if he'd thrown in a paragraph break every once in a while, it would have helped it read easier, too.

I also found the structure itself a bit taxing. The whole thing is your top-layer story, where Shaharazad is telling her stories, but then in her stories, some of the characters also tell lengthy, convoluted stories, and sometimes characters in those stories also tell stories. So keeping track of where you are, and what's going on, and who's telling what was a challenge at times. Especially with that whole lack of paragraph breaks thing, because while each story usually got some sort of header to announce its beginning, the ends could just be lost somewhere in the middle of paragraph. I won't say it was impossible to follow, but it took more mental energy than I would have liked it to to keep everything straight.

Ultimately, though, it really was the misogyny and racism that did it for me. Pretty much every time someone got married, you just knew that sooner or later, he'd find out his wife was sleeping with some "ugly black slave." (It pains me to even have to write that.) And then there were fifty-fifty odds she'd also put some sort of hex on him in revenge for his having killed her lover.

So... yeah. I'm done.

[Markus]

And forsooth he spake "to hear is to obey" and when he arrived he spoke the following verse

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I would take a stab at this and see what was in store. I read 35 stories and the first volume and here is the gist of what I read:

Story Type One:
My wife slept with the African slave, she is a whore and must die.
Proceeds to kill wife.
Oh, you mean she didn't sleep with the slave.
Oops.
Oh well.

Story Type Two:
Genie tells guy to essentially not press the red button
Guy proceeds to press the red button.
Genie turns guy into dog, or into an ape, or stabs out his eye, or cuts off his hand, etc.
A mystical virgin Sultan daughter removes the spell.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[Nas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arabian nights tales has always have a special place in my heart, for its wonderful plot and unexpected events happened through each story.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

JThe classic Richard Burton translation of the Thousand and One Nights, based on the much longer Egyptian version (I've already read the shorter Syrian version which is equivalent to the first volume and a half of this), published in ten volumes plus six supplementary volumes. Since this is a Project Gutenberg e-book, there are no page numbers, but going by the print edition I have of the third and fourth volumes, the first two volumes average 668 pages each so I'm using that. I will wait until I finish the whole series (hopefully over the next three or four months) to write a real review.

[Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51252...

[WadeofEarth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading some reviews of this book you either love it or you hate it, maybe I just didn't get it. I had set out to listen to the whole collection, a huge undertaking but I figured, what the heck, they seem to be important books so I'll check them out. The stories are fine but get somewhat repetitive and seem fairly pointless; they are fantastical without being exciting. I can appreciate that this book exists, that it is super old, that it probably can tell us a lot about Arab culture from the time, but for a story or a book that has value to any but an Arabic scholar, I just don't get it. The saving grace; what gave this book it's second star, is twofold: One, it has impressive longevity, this book is stinking old and people are still reading it, bravo, this is an exceptional feat. the second is that it has a neat little trick of working (I can only assume since I only got through volume one) all of the stories over a thousand and one nights (a ton of stories) into a giant Russian nesting doll of stories. How it works is that, during the course of her stories, Scheherazade has one of the characters in her story tell a story, then one of the characters in that characters story tells a story, and so on into we are so deep into Inception that I wonder if we will ever get out. So that was cool and well worthy of a second star, and if I had enjoyed any of the stories nearly as much as I enjoyed the concept of the infinite nesting stories, it would have rated higher.

[Winterdragon · Rating 3 out of 5]

30 nights into this colossus of a tale containing a staggering amount of layers of stories, I have taken away the following:

Women are deceitful and unfaithful by nature, and it is a reasonable thing to kill them if they are found guilty of adultery. Better make sure that they are actually guilty _before_ slaying them, though.
Beautiful people are by nature good and deserve one another, while ugly people are fair game for playing tricks upon.
It is a desirable thing to marry one's cousin, except when they are ugly, or mean.
Telling a good story about your adventures will often save you if your life is under threat, so do practice your storytelling!

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on Project Gutenberg. The translation of Richard Francis Burton is the result of the use of his talent in the Arabic language and culture to "produce a full, complete, unvarnished and uncastrated copy of the original Arabic texts. There are 16 volumes. Volume 1 starts with an introduction and night 1, then ends during night 34. This is not a version for children because of the adult themes and literal translations. It's a valuable historic record and I found it worth the read. I plan to read all 16 volumes. Some of the Locations: [Persia (Iran), Hind (India), Roum (Asia Minor/Turkey), Maridin, Diyar Bakr; Iraq: Baghdad, Bassorah (Basra); Saudi Arabia: Magnetic Mountain; Israel: Jerusalem; Syria: Aleppo, Damascus, Emesa, Hamah; Egypt: Cairo, Khan El-Khalilli, Kalyub; China; Abyssinia (Ethiopia)]
Sometimes reading this version is challenging because it was translated in the 1800's and by an Englishman, so the language and vocabulary he uses is dated.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this one for the Pop Sugar challenge (published anonymously). Thank goodness this was only one of the 16 volumes. Tale of Genji had been the longest book on my TBR list, but this was up there and it was only ONE volume! Ugh.

There are definitely some cultural things I didn't grasp, but the writing, it felt old and it was sometimes difficult to understand, but what made it almost unbearable was having to translate it in my head got easier, but it also made it boring. There is a lot of repetition in it.

I would have liked it better if it were a more recent translation, but the story itself is so old, that I still would have found fault in things (like how women are written about). Culture/time period just didn't work for me. It gets 2 stars for longevity.

[Narmin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an old translation (1885), and Richard Burton chose to use archaic words and style which made this book hard to follow. I wouldn’t recommend this translation.

The stories felt repetitive after awhile, all involving jinns, magic, transformation to animals, royal families and a love story.

I found it interesting that these stories centred around magic, yet they halalified it by referencing it is all by the will of God.

There are stories within stories, within stories. I liked this style of the nested stories, but I felt that it was overused.

There was anti-blackness in some of these stories which was triggering.

2 stars

[Vickie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like reading books from different cultures and different eras. This book fits the bill. There is plenty of Moslem culture in this book for a peek into the mindset of the people that live in this region of the world.

[David]

Have all 16 volumes of this early-to-mid 20th Century edition. Will start with Volume 1 . . . seems logical!

[Ashish Chaturvedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is designed in old English, sometimes hard to comprehend, it has lot of poetry , and i believe it helps reader to successfully travel the arab world . Good book.

[Debbie Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read made even better by a performance on audible.com. It is hard to reconcile these stories with Middle Eastern culture.

[Raktim · Rating 3 out of 5]

60/100

[Mohammad Ali Abedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one ever told me this compilation is so humongous. The translation by Richard Francis Burton is 16 volumes in total. The first book itself is relatively large and reading all 16 is too much, so I've stopped at the first volume.

The wrap around sure be familiar to most people. In short, Shahrzade marries the King, who sleeps with a wife for only a night and then executes them. To ward off her execution, she tells him stories, and usually stops halfway or starts a new one, so the King will want the hear the rest the next day. This means, in a way, this is probably the earliest form of cliffhangers. After writing this sentence, I checked the Wikipedia page on cliffhangers and it does mention this book.

The stories are various and some contain stories within stories within stories, and they are various styles and genres. They are not the kind of stories we might imagine, all genies and magics, while they do exist, most seem to be on more realistic grounds. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stories were based on truth, because sometimes the Sultans or Kings in the stories, are fascinated by the events that occur, that they ask the events to be written down.

To me, the best thing about the book, is not necessary the stories, but the world that it creates. The Islamic world sure seemed to have been more fun back then. You get a sense of the times and it is endlessly fascinating to me that the books were initially censored by the west when they were translated! That is, stories that had existed in the Islamic world for generations were considered to smutty for the west! Burton's version doesn't censor but it was privately distributed and he apologies for the smut in the introduction.

Aside from the erotica elements, there are other things that are interesting. Men weep openly and do not hide their emotions. The women seem to usually sleep around. Unibrow on both men and women is attractive. Women sleep around and like big black slave cock. Almost everyone likes drinking.

The end of the volume has lots of footnotes, which numbered to around 600 footnotes which were to me as interesting as the stories, as it provided a lot of back information.

[Abdul Tabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is over Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
I thought the classic story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was one that was both ironic and entertaining. It was ironic to me that the house servant of Ali Baba is actually the hero of the whole story. Ali Baba just seemed to be at the right place and at the right time most of the story and had fortune and good luck on his side throughout. This story showed us many facets of human characteristics from the greed and ill nature of his brother, to Ali Baba's almost dumb blonde yet extremely lucky traits, to Morgiana's heroic and cunning nature. Even after the Captain of the thieves finds out who is accessing their treasure cove through means of bribery and investigation, Ali Baba remains safe the whole time because of his servant Morgiana. The story reminded me of how a child would begin to cross the street without looking both ways, only to be saved by their parent. Unbeknownst to the child the actual dangers that lie ahead when doing something like that, and an instinctive save by the parent without giving it much thought.
Great classic read, I would highly recommend! How else would you know where "Open Sesame!" came from anyway?!

[Lindsey Sparks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't stop singing songs from Aladdin while reading this. I was surprised by how engaging this was. I expected to like the stories I was familiar with and not many others, which is what has happened with most fairy tales I've read. I did like reading about Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad, but I think the story about the hunchback was my favorite. It was certainly the most memorable, and not one that even Disney can clean up!
I like seeing how these stories influenced later western stories, from The Canterbury Tales to The Little Mermaid. I also liked seeing the different influences on these stories - Persian, Indian, Chinese, Greek - not just Arab like I thought.
I also found the gender aspect of these stories interesting. Women primarily are master manipulators and must never be trusted. However, they are quite clever, usually smarter, or at least less naive, than the men. The frame tale is also about a woman manipulating a man, although in that case it ends well for everyone.
I think this edition is a nice length - it's not so many stories that you get tired of them and from the intro it sounded like these were a good representation.

[Mathew Walls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started this ages ago and just got around to finishing it. It gets pretty samey as you go through it, particularly in terms of characters. There's really not a lot of depth to them - basically you've got the good protagonist who does the right thing and is tricked, the bad protagonist who does the wrong thing and gets his comeuppance (but then usually gets rewarded in the end anyway), the good woman who goes out of her way to help the protagonist, the bad woman who goes out of her way to harm the protagonist, the good man who rewards the protagonist for basically no reason and the bad man who punishes the protagonist for basically no reason. That's pretty much everyone. The stories themselves are a little more varied but not by a lot.

[Jen3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm performing in a play right now which has a decidedly Eastern feel in its premise, and the title characted is, in fact, a Jinn, so I decided to go back and reread this translation of the clasic Arabian Nights stories.

I love these. They're mavelous and bawdy and terrifying and beautiful. And this translation is neither edited nor censored, so I would highly recommend it to anyone, but with a word of warning to those folks for whom Disney's Aladin is their only reference point for these tales.

[Thannasset · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does anyone at this site not know a story from the 'Arabian Nights'? To anyone who hasn't read the English version which wasn't chopped up by someone who thought they had to for some ungodly reason, here's one fairly easy to find edition..not sanitized, not bowlderized, not censored, whatever.

To anyone at all who reads this and knows the stories in their original language(s), please please reply, message me, whatever!

thannasset

[John Watt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic timeless tales, which are well written and it is nice to enjoy them uncensored. I have read the Lane translation, which I found rather distasteful as it was obvious things were changed and omitted to fit his narrow minded puritanical ideals. I am also familiar with several of the various children's versions, which were great when I was a child, but lacked the depth and substance I look for now. The Burton translation is excellent!

[Douglas S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This rating is for the massive 16 book collection.
There are some typos and the end of the first book is shortened. This will be fixed in later printings. Considering the affordability of these classics, I will only take away 1 star from this publication due to these problems. This is a superb classic. Future printing of this collection should be 5 stars out of 5 stars.

[Jon Mann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Burton translation is something else - the more recent Lyons translation looks rather flat and rushed by comparison - but eventually I found the convoluted verse and prose too tiresome to enjoy. RIP Scheherazade on Night 19.

[Jerry Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part one of my pretentious summer read. Definitely not for everyone. The language is dated, and the stories are very similar to each other, but these tales have been around for a long time, and I felt it was time to read them. Only fifteen more volumes to go.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Research for project. Outside of our current entertainment industry, that it influenced. To hell with the delicate sensibilities Western Civilization. It's not packaged for the contemporary consumer. And there's a whole lotta weirdness going on.