Description

Shown here is the nine-volume edition of Alf laylah wa-laylah (Thousand and one nights), known in the West as the Arabian Nights, translated by British poet John Payne (1842−1916) and privately published by the Villon Society in London in 1882−84. The tales that form the Arabian Nights have their roots many centuries ago in oral storytelling, mystical stories, and folk tales from Persia, Baghdad, Cairo, and India, which were spread by merchants and other travelers on the major trade routes of the East from the ninth century onward ...