The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night -- Volumes One and Two: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments by Sir Richard Burton

by Richard Francis Burton, Tom White (Editor)

This edition of the Thousand Nights and a Night is enhanced with hyperlinked footnotes which work with Amazon's popup footnotes to enable the reader to read the numerous detailed notes without having to flip pages. Also included is a hypertext Index of the individual Nights which appear in the book. This enables the reader to go directly to any one night in any order and see what was being related on that Night, independent of the reading order of the book. The titles of the Nights link back to this table.This is the first volume in the series, comprising the first and second volumes published by Burton.The book is priced at the minimum because profit is not the issue; the goal is to make this book as accessible as possible in the digital age and to keep the book alive for the future.

854 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 8, 2020

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.