c1907 Stories From the Arabian Nights

Description

Colour Plates, Illustrated, Publishers' Original Binding

Edmund Dulac's illustrated 'Arabian Nights'.

Illustrated with a tipped-in colour frontispiece, and thirty-three tipped-in colour plates.

'Arabian Nights', or 'One Thousand and One Nights', is a collection of folk tales from the Middle East. It was collected over centuries, with the roots of the tales being traced from Greek, Indian, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Jewish folklore.

The tales are being told by Scheherazade to the King Shahryar, in a bid to save her life. After discovering his wife was cheating on him, he killed her, and vowed to marry a new virgin every day, and then behead them the next. In this vein, he had killed one-thousand and one women before marrying Scheherazade. Scheherazade entices the King by telling him a story on their first night together, pausing halfway through as the sun came up. The King, being absorbed by the story, keeps Scheherazade alive, eager to hear more from her.

Retold by Laurence Housman.

Undated, dated from Jisc from a copy held at the University of Oxford Libraries.