The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

6C Edited by Rev. Geo. Fyler Townsend. London: Frederick Warne and Co., ca. 1910.

Note

The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments is a well‑known English edition of the classic collection One Thousand and One Nights, the legendary Middle Eastern folk tales that include stories like Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor. Originally compiled in Arabic over many centuries, these tales are framed by the story of Scheherazade, who cleverly tells nightly stories to the king to delay her execution, weaving a tapestry of adventure, magic, and moral insight that has captivated readers for generations. The Townsend edition, published in the late 19th century (often dated around the 1860s–1890s) by Frederick Warne & Co. in London and sometimes in the U.S., revises earlier translations and includes notes and illustrations that made the stories accessible and appealing to Victorian and Edwardian readers.

George Fyler Townsend’s role in this edition was as editor and reviser: he drew on previous English translations and scholarship to present the Arabian Nights in a more cohesive, reader‑friendly form, often with explanatory notes and decorative illustration plates included in the volume. Although later translations—such as Edward William Lane’s in 1839 and Richard Francis Burton’s more complete and literal version in 1885–88—are better known to scholars, Townsend’s Arabian Nights’ Entertainments was widely read in its day and helped popularize these stories for English‑speaking audiences, especially young readers and collectors of beautiful illustrated books

Description

Brown leather with gold embossing design on front board and lettering on the spine. Marbled end papers. School Emblem on front from Roysses School Abingdon. Very fine condition.