Showing posts with label Arabian Nights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabian Nights. Show all posts

Friday, March 29, 2024

The Annotated Arabian Nights


Yasmine Seale, trans.: The Annotated Arabian Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta (2021)


A new translation of the Thousand and One Nights can be quite a hard sell. You'll note that I've listed some 27 of them at the foot of this post - and that's just a selection ...

They range from the first - and still most influential - Antoine Galland's 12-volume French translation (1704-17), to a more recent 4-volume Spanish translation by Salvador Peña Martín (2016).

Among them there are a dozen or so English versions, at least three of them - Payne, Burton, and Lyons - claiming to be 'complete' (whatever, precisely, that can be taken to mean):
  1. Anonymous (from Antoine Galland) [1706-21] (French / English)
  2. George Lamb (from Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall) [1826] (French / English)
  3. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
  4. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
  5. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
  6. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
  7. Andrew Lang (mostly retold from Galland) [1898] (English)
  8. Laurence Housman (mostly retold from Galland) [1907-14] (English)
  9. E. Powys Mathers (from Dr. J. C. Mardrus) [1923] (French / English)
  10. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
  11. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
  12. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
  13. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)
I'm pleased to record that there's now another to add to that tally:


Yasmine Seale: Aladdin: A New Translation (2019)


The Annotated Arabian Nights, together with her earlier single-volume Aladdin, constitute all that we've seen so far of French-Syrian poet and translator Yasmine Seale's 1001 Nights. It's possible that there may be more to come, however. According to her Wikipedia entry Seale "is the first woman to translate the entirety of The Arabian Nights from French and Arabic into English."



The "entirety of The Arabian Nights" cannot be referring solely to Seale's and her collaborator Paulo Lemos Horta's Annotated Arabian Nights. While that book certainly presents a very extensive selection from the immense body of materials which constitute the Nights, it can certainly not be called "complete."



Gabriel Roth Horta: Paulo Lemos Horta


Richard F. Burton (1885-88) filled 16 closely-printed volumes with his own attempt to provide a complete Arabian Nights. A good deal of that consisted of annotation and commentary, but the same cannot be said of John Payne (1882-89), whose translation eventually occupied 13 volumes of text, covering much the same territory.

The most recent "complete" English version of the Egyptian recension of the Nights (by far the most extensive of the various textual traditions), by Malcolm C. & Ursula Lyons (2008), occupies three volumes and 2,700-odd pages. But even that has been (lightly) edited for repetitions and redundancies.

Perhaps the most complete (and most universally praised) modern translation, Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel's 3-volume French version for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (2005-07) clocks in at 3,504 pages.


Hannā Diyāb: The Book of Travels (2022)


So what precisely is Seale's contribution to the Arabian Nights tradition? Here's Wikipedia again, in their page dedicated to the One Thousand and One Nights:
A new English language translation was published in December 2021, the first solely by a female author, Yasmine Seale, which removes earlier sexist and racist references. The new translation includes all the tales from Hanna Diyab and additionally includes stories previously omitted featuring female protagonists, such as tales about Parizade, Pari Banu, and the horror story Sidi Numan.
The reference to Hannā Diyāb is to a young Syrian traveller who visited Europe in the early eighteenth century, and - among all the other adventures detailed in his recently translated travel book - seems to have been the informant "Hanna from Aleppo" who told (or wrote out for?) Antoine Galland the so-called "orphan tales" which occupy the bulk of the last four volumes - roughly a third - of his translation.



To call Hannā Diyāb the co-author of the collection, as Paulo Lemos Horta does in his 2017 book Marvellous Thieves, is therefore no real exaggeration. Galland's diary for the period 1708-15 record details of 14 stories told him by the sbove-mentioned "Hanna from Aleppo". Roughly ten of these, albeit in greatly expanded form, made it into the final text of his Mille et une nuits (1704-17):
  1. Histoire d'Aladdin ou la Lampe merveilleuse [The Story of Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp] (told in 1709: May 5) [included in Galland, Vol. 9]
  2. Les aventures de Calife Haroun Alraschid [The Night Adventures of Caliph Haroun-Al-Raschid] (May 10) [Vol. 10]
    1. Histoire de l'Aveugle Baba-Alidalla [The Story of the Blind Baba-Alidalla]
    2. Histoire de Sidi Nouman [History of Sidi Nouman]
  3. Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhababbal [The Story of Cogia Hassan Alhababbal] (May 29) [Vol. 10]
  4. Histoire d'Ali-Baba et de quarante voleurs exterminés par une esclave [Tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves] (May 27) [Vol. 11]
  5. Histoire d'Ali Cogia, Marchand de Bagdad [The Story of Ali Cogia, Merchant of Baghdad] (May 29) [Vol. 11]
  6. Histoire du Cheval enchanté [The Ebony Horse] (May 13) [Vol. 11]
  7. Histoire du prince Ahmed et de la fee Pari-Banou [History of Prince Ahmed and the Pari-Banou] (May 22) [Vol. 12]
  8. Histoire des deux Soeurs jalouses de leur cadette [The Story of the two sisters jealous of their younger sister] (May 25) [Vol. 12]
As you can see, they include such classic tales as "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba". Galland made no reference to this indebtedness in any of his published writings. However, since he died while his translation was still in progress (the final two volumes appeared posthumously), this may have been more inadvertent than deliberate.


Publishers Weekly: Yasmine Seale has retranslated Aladdin (19/10/18)


But going back to Yasmine Seale's original translation of Aladdin. In his Guardian review of the book (2/11/18), Richard Lea quotes her as admitting that these recent discoveries of the full extent of Galland's indebtedness to Hannā Diyāb have had little effect on her version, since “the only text we have is Galland’s, and that is what I have to work with”:
But knowing the story of the tale’s construction makes Aladdin “a document of exchange, of translation on several levels, a product of both the Arabic and French literary traditions.”
Seale continues, “I’m less interested in what ‘a Frenchman’ or ‘a Syrian’ might have invented than in the particular voices of these two men”:
Both came from learned, cosmopolitan cities. They were complex products of their knowledge and experience – who isn’t? Each was familiar with and fascinated by the other’s culture and language.
As for the Nights themselves, she sees them as "part of the bloodstream of world literature. They’re furniture, like the great myths. Because of their endless, slippery nature (a sea of stories without an author) they have flowed freely across borders of language and genre.”


Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nightmare (1983)


In an earlier interview with Wendy Smith for Publisher's Weekly (10/10/18), Seale revealed something of her own background, and the reason why she sees herself as such an ideal translator for such "slippery", cross-cultural works:
My mother is Syrian, but my father was a mix: his parents were Russian and Tunisian, he had grown up in Britain, and both my parents wrote in English. I grew up speaking and hearing three languages: French, English, and Arabic. For a long time I felt that I was just going to be French; my studies focused on French literature, and that was going to be my identity. Then I thought, ‘No, I must learn Arabic and understand it properly — that’s part of my heritage.’ That’s why this work has been so pleasurable; I feel I can bring all that to the table and I don’t have to choose. Galland’s description of Topkapi Palace — which I can see from my window — finds its way into the descriptions of the mythical palaces in Aladdin, but so do Diyab’s experiences at the palace of Versailles. Aladdin is neither just an Orientalist fantasy, nor is it just the vision of a Syrian person in France; it’s both at the same time, and I find it moving that it can be both.

Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)


This sense of the Nights as a work so contaminated by diverse cultural influences that the very notion of "fidelity to the original", normally so crucial in translation, becomes literally meaningless, underlies Seale's work on both Aladdin and the Annotated Arabian Nights. As she herself puts it:
Fidelity to what? When you have a story that exists in 80 different versions, you have to make choices. To translate the Nights means continuing to shape the stories and acknowledging that you are bringing your own sensibility to them rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.
Finally, it seems, the Nights may have found a translator who not only understands but actually embodies their paradoxical nature:
I was trying to bring out the freshness, vivacity, and wit I saw in the original French; Galland was an incredibly witty and playful person. I didn’t want to do what a lot of other translators of the Nights have done, which is to translate it into deliberately archaic language. The 19th-century translators all did this, Richard Burton most famously; his translations, even by Victorian standards, are incredibly florid and elaborate. It was a way of creating this sense of distance from the world these texts came from — a sense that the East was unfathomable, strange, and alien. I wanted to bring out the modernity that is already in the text.

Lord Leighton: Sir Richard Burton (1876)


I have to acknowledge the truth in this. Much though I adore Burton's Nights, it is almost necessary to learn a new language, Burtonian, to understand them. Perhaps that's why they've had such an influence on writers who were not native speakers of English: Jorge Luis Borges, most famously, but also Hugo von Hoffmansthal in Austria and Junichiro Tanizaki in Japan.

Her comments on the actual process of translation are fascinating, too:
Translating the 14th-century Arabic texts is “a completely different experience,” Seale comments. “Galland’s style is fairly close to what we would recognize as English prose, but in the Arabic there is no punctuation; clauses are separated by the word wa, which means and, or the word fa, which can mean so, or then, or however, or because. As a translator, you have to intervene to shape the narrative and create a readable English paragraph. To want ‘authenticity’ in The Arabian Nights is a bit of a misnomer: these are stories that have continually shifted, that are constantly changing, that are made of their accretions and layers.”

Ferdinand Keller: Scheherazade and the Sultan (1880)


It's perhaps a bit cheeky - not to mention somewhat predictable - to suggest an analogy here with the legendary Scheherazade herself, subject - as well as putative author - of the Arabian Nights in much the same sense as we postulate the authors of other "inspired" writings. But then, Seale does almost invite the comparison:
"In the framing story that begins the Nights, this king kills his unfaithful wife and decides to take a new woman every night and kill her in the morning,” she explains. “Scheherazade intervenes and says, ‘I will save my sisters from this fate.’ What we know about her from the story is that she has collected books, she has a library, she has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages. She is in this sense a translator and reinterpreter of these stories. Thinking about Scheherazade helped me think about the whole text as a series of conduits — stories being channeled through a series of vessels, Scheherazade being one. Every single person who has written them down, every translator, everyone who’s added to this ocean of stories, is a kind of boatman ferrying the stories along. It makes sense to me, rather than thinking about this binary of original and translation, to break down that boundary.
As for her own relationship to the text:
Translating Aladdin, Yasmine Seale says, “made me feel like there was a plan in my life all along and everything had been leading to this moment.” Speaking from a sun-drenched room in her home in Istanbul, she explains, “It was written down in the 18th century by a Frenchman, Antoine Galland, based on the story he was told by a young Syrian traveler named Hanna Diyab, so it is both a product of France and also of the Arab world. I grew up in France and studied French literature, with a particular interest in the 18th century, and then went to university and studied Arab literature. So it’s a text that combines my two great interests."
In other words, she too has "collected books", she too "has a library", and "has studied and memorized tales from previous times and the history of bygone ages."

So if we are being invited here to imagine Yasmine Seale as a Scheherazade for our own times, what better USP [= Unique Selling Point] could there be for a new translation of this most evergreen, baffling, and slippery of works, the Arabian Nights?

Seriously, how can you hesitate to add this beautifully illustrated and annotated new translation to your own bookshelf? I, for one, am thoroughly sold.


Michael Holtmann: Yasmine Seale's Annotated Arabian Nights (17/11/21)






Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The 1001 Nights:

    Texts & Translations:

    1. Texts [c.800-1986] [Arabic]
    2. Antoine Galland [1704-1717] (French)
    3. Dom Dennis Chavis & M. Cazotte [1788-89] (French)
    4. Maximilian Habicht [1824-25] (German)
    5. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall et al. [1826] (French / German / English)
    6. Gustav Weil [1837-41] (German)
    7. Henry Torrens [1838] (English)
    8. Edward W. Lane [1839-40] (English)
    9. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
    10. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
    11. Max Henning [1895-97] (German)
    12. Andrew Lang [1898] (English)
    13. Dr. J. C. Mardrus [1899-1904] (French)
    14. Cary von Karwath [1906-14] (German)
    15. Laurence Housman [1907-14] (English)
    16. Enno Littmann [1921-28] (German)
    17. M. A. Salye [1929-36] (Russian)
    18. Francesco Gabrieli [1948] (Italian)
    19. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
    20. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns [1954-55] (Spanish)
    21. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
    22. René R. Khawam [1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)
    23. Felix Tauer [1928-34] (Czech & German)
    24. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
    25. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel [1991-2001 & 2005-7] (French)
    26. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)
    27. Salvador Peña Martín [2016] (Spanish)
    28. Yasmine Seale [2019-2021] (English)
    29. Miscellaneous




    Galland manuscript (14th Century CE)

    Texts:

    Arabic

  1. Alph Laylé Wa Laylé. 4 vols. Beirut: Al-Maktaba Al-Thakafiyat, A.H. 1401 [= 1981].

  2. Arabic Key Readers. A Thousand and One Nights: Graduated Readings for English Speaking Students – Book 1: Story of the Book, Nights 1 through 9. Retold by Michel Nicola. Troy, Michigan: International Book Centre, 1986.

  3. Zotenberg, Hermann. Histoire d’Alâ al-Din ou La Lampe Merveilleuse: Texte Arabe publié avec une notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une nuits. Paris; Imprimerie Nationale, 1888.


  4. Antoine Galland: Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704-17)

    Translations:

    Antoine Galland (1646-1715) – [12 vols: 1704-1717] (French)

  5. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes traduits par Galland. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Gaston Picard. 2 vols. 1960. Paris: Garnier, 1975.

  6. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Jean Gaulmier. 3 vols. 1965. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, 1985, 1991.

  7. Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a bloody Vow he had made to marry a Lady every day, and have her cut off next Morning, to avenge himself for the Disloyalty of his first Sultaness, &c. Containing a better Account of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz. Tartars, Persians, and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published. Translated into French from the Arabian Mss. by M. Galland of the Royal Academy, and now done into English from the last Paris Edition. London: Andrew Bell, 1706-17. 16th ed. 4 vols. London & Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1781.

  8. The Arabian Nights. Illustrated with Engravings from Designs by R. Westall, R. A. 4 vols. London: Printed for C and J. Rivington et al., 1825.

  9. Forster, the Rev. Edward, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 1812. Rev. G. Moir Bussey. Illustrated by 24 Engravings from Designs by R. Smirke, Esq. R. A. London: Joseph Thomas / T. Tegg; and Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1840.

  10. Galland, A. Las Mil y Una Noches: Cuentos orientales. Trans. Pedro Pedraza y Páez. Biblioteca Hispania. Barcelona: Editorial Ramón Sopena, 1934.

  11. Mack, Robert L., ed. Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.


  12. Denis Chavis & Jacques Cazotte (fl. 1780s / 1719-1792) – [4 vols: 1788-89] (French)

  13. Chavis, Dom, and M. Cazotte, trans. La Suite des Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes. Cabinet des Fées 38-41. 4 vols. Geneva: Barde & Manget, 1788-89.


  14. Maximilian Habicht et al. (1775-1839) – [15 vols: 1824-25] (German)

  15. Habicht, Max., Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall, trans. Tausend und Eine Nacht, Arabische Erzählungen. 1824-25. Ed. Karl Martin Schiller. 12 vols. Leipzig: F. W. Hendel, 1926.


  16. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall / Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien / George Lamb (1774-1856 / 1800-1870 / 1784-1834) – [3 vols: 1826] (German / French / English)

  17. Lamb, George, trans. New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Selected from the Original Oriental Ms. by J. Von Hammer, and Now First Translated into English. 1826. 3 vols in 1. Milton Keynes, UK: Palala Press, 2015.


  18. Gustav Weil (1808-1889) – [4 vols: 1837-41] (German)

  19. Weil, Gustav, trans. Tausendundeine Nacht. 1837-41. Ed. Inge Dreecken. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, n.d. [c. 1960s]


  20. Henry Whitelock Torrens (1806-1852) – [1 vol: 1838] (English)

  21. Torrens, Henry, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Translated from the Arabic of the Ægyptian M.S. as edited by Wm. Hay Macnaghten, Esqr. 1838. India: Pranava Books, n.d.


  22. Edward William Lane (1801-1876) – [3 vols: 1839-40] (English)

  23. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. A New Translation from the Arabic, with Copious Notes. 3 vols. London: Charles Knight, 1839-41.

  24. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights; Commonly Called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Edward Stanley Poole. 3 vols. 1859. London: Chatto, 1912.

  25. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Stanley Lane-Poole. 4 vols. 1906. Bohn’s Popular Library. London: G. Bell, 1925.

  26. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or The Thousand and One Nights: The Complete, Original Translation of Edward William Lane, with the Translator’s Complete, Original Notes and Commentaries on the Text. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1927.

  27. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Wood Engravings from Original Designs by William Harvey. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930.


  28. John Payne (1842-1916) – [13 vols: 1882-89] (English)

  29. Payne, John, trans. Oriental Tales: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night [and other tales]. 1882-97. 15 vols. Herat edition (limited to 500 copies): No. 141. London: Printed for Subscribers Only, 1901.
    1. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Now First Completely Done into English Prose and Verse, from the Original Arabic. 9 vols (London: Villon Society, 1882-84)
    2. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 2)
    3. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 3)
    4. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 4)
    5. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 5)
    6. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 6)
    7. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 7)
    8. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 8)
    9. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (vol. 9)
    10. Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-’18) Editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Not Occurring in the Other Printed Texts of the Work; Now First Done into English. 3 vols. (London: Villon Society, 1884)
    11. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 2)
    12. Tales from the Arabic (vol. 3)
    13. Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp; Zein ul Asnam and the King of the Jinn: Two Stories Done into English from the Recently Discovered Arabic Text (London: Villon Society, 1889)
    14. The Persian letters, with introduction and notes, done into English from the original by Montesquieu (London, 1897)
    15. A Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour and Tartarian Tales, by Thomas Simon Gueulette (London, 1897)

  30. Payne, John, trans. The Portable Arabian Nights. 1882-1884. Ed. Joseph Campbell. 1952. New York: The Viking Press, 1963.

  31. Payne, John, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. 1882-1884. Publisher's Note by Steven Moore. 3 vols. Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Classics, 2007.


  32. Richard F. Burton (1821-1890) – [16 vols: 1885-88] (English)

  33. Burton, Richard F, trans. A Plain and Literal Translation of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction, Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. 10 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1885. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.

  34. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 6 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1886-88. 7 vols. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.

  35. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. 10 vols. U.S.A.: The Burton Club, n.d. [c.1940s].

  36. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 1886-88. 6 vols. U.S.A..: The Burton Club, n.d. [c. 1940s].

  37. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. New York: The Heritage Press, 1934.

  38. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. Decorated with 1001 Illustrations by Valenti Angelo. 3 vols. 1934. The Heritage Press. New York: The George Macy Companies, Inc., 1962.

  39. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, or The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Selection of the Most Famous and Representative of these Tales. Ed. Bennett A Cerf. 1932. Introductory Essay by Ben Ray Redman. New York: Modern Library, 1959.

  40. Burton, Sir Richard, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Notes by Henry Torrens, Edward Lane, John Payne. Illustrations by Arthur Szyk. 1955. The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1983.

  41. Burton, Richard F. Love, War and Fancy: The Customs and Manners of the East from Writings on The Arabian Nights. Ed. Kenneth Walker. 1884. London: Kimber Paperback Library, 1964.

  42. Chagall, Marc, illus. Arabian Nights: Four Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. Introduction by Norbert Nobis. Trans. Richard F. Burton. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1988.

  43. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: Penguin, 1991.

  44. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights, Volume II: More Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Sir Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: New American Library, 1999.


  45. Max Henning (1861-1927) – [24 vols: 1895-97] (German)

  46. Henning, Max, trans. Tausend und eine Nacht. 1895-97. Ed. Hans W. Fischer. Berlin & Darmstadt: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1957.


  47. Andrew Lang (1844-1912) – [1 vol: 1898] (English)

  48. Lang, Andrew, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by H. J. Ford. 1898. London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.

  49. Lang, Andrew, trans. Tales from The Arabian Nights. 1898. Illustrated by Edmond Dulac. Afterword by Pete Hamill. The World’s Best Reading. Sydney & Auckland: Reader’s Digest, 1991.


  50. Dr. J. C. Mardrus (1868–1949) – [16 vols: 1899-1904] (French)

  51. Mardrus, Dr. J. C., trans. Le Livre des Mille et une Nuits. 16 vols. Paris: Édition de la Revue blanche, 1899-1904. Ed. Marc Fumaroli. 2 vols. Paris: Laffont, 1989.

  52. Mathers, Edward Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered from the Literal and Complete Version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus; and Collated with Other Sources. 1923. 8 vols. London: The Casanova Society, 1929.

  53. Mardrus, Dr J. C. The Queen of Sheba: Translated into French from his own Arabic Text. Trans. E. Powys Mathers. London: The Casanova Society, n.d. [1924].

  54. Mathers, E. Powys. Sung to Shahryar: Poems from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. London: The Casanova Society, 1925.

  55. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. Arabian Love Tales: Being Romances Drawn from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. Illustrated by Lettice Sandford. London: The Folio Society, 1949.

  56. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. 4 vols. 1949. 2nd ed. 1964. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.

  57. The Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus by Powys Mathers. Introduction by Marina Warner. 6 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2003.
    • Vol. 1: with 8 colour illustrations by Kay Nielsen, 375 pp.
    • Vol. 2: with 8 colour illustrations by Grahame Baker, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 3: with 8 colour illustrations by Debra McFarlane, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 4: with 8 colour illustrations by Roman Pisarev, 424 pp.
    • Vol. 5: with 8 colour illustrations by Jane Ray, 431 pp.
    • Vol. 6: with 8 colour illustrations by Neil Packer, 448 pp.


  58. Cary von Karwath (?) – [19 vols: 1906-14] (German)

  59. Karwath, Cary Von, trans. 1001 Nacht: Vollständige Ausgabe in 18 Taschenbüchern mit einem Zusatzband: Nach dem arabischen Urtext angeordnet und übertragen von Cary von Karwath. 1906-14. 19 vols. München: Goldmann Verlag, 1987.


  60. Laurence Housman (1865-1959) – [4 vols: 1907-14] (English)

  61. Housman, Laurence. Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. New York: Doran, n.d.

  62. Housman, Laurence. Sindbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. Weathervane Books. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978.


  63. Enno Littmann (1875-1958) – [6 vols: 1921-28] (German)

  64. Littmann, Enno, trans. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in zwölf Teilbänden zum ersten mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. 1921-28. 2nd ed. 1953. 6 vols in 12. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1976.

  65. Littmann, Enno, trans. Geschichten der Liebe aus den 1001 Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext übertragen von Enno Littmann. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1973.


  66. Mikhail Alexandrovich Salye (1899-1961) – [8 vols: 1929-36] (Russian)

  67. Salye, M. A., trans. Тысяча и Одна Ночь. 1929-36. 6 vols. Санкт-Петербург: «Кристалл», 2000.


  68. Francesco Gabrieli (1904-1996) – [4 vols: 1948] (Italian)

  69. Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Le mille e una notte: Prima versione integrale dall’arabo. Trans. Francesco Gabrieli, Antonio Cesaro, Constantino Pansera, Umberto Rizzitano and Virginia Vacca. 1948. Gli struzzi 35. 4 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1972.

  70. Faccioli, Emilio, ed. Le mille e una notte: Scelta di racconti. Dall’edizione integrale diretta da Francesco Gabrieli. Letture per la Scuola Media 56. Torino: Einaudi, 1980.


  71. Arthur John Arberry (1905-1969) – [1 vol: 1953] (English)

  72. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953.

  73. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Illustrations by Asgeir Scott. 1953. A Mentor Book. New York: New American Library, 1955.


  74. Rafael Cansinos-Asséns (1882-1964) – [3 vols: 1954-55] (Spanish)

  75. Cansinos Asséns, Rafael, trans. Libro de las mil y una noches, por primera vez puestas en castellano del árabe original. Prologadas, anotadas y cotejadas con las principales versiones en otras lenguas y en la vernácula por Rafael Cansinos Asséns. 3 vols. 1954-55. Mexico: Aguilar, 1990.


  76. Nessim Joseph Dawood (1927-2014) – [2 vols: 1954-57] (English)

  77. Dawood, N. J., trans. The Thousand and One Nights: The Hunchback, Sindbad, and Other Tales. Penguin 1001. 1954. Penguin Classics L64. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.

  78. Dawood, N. J., trans. Aladdin and Other Tales from The Thousand and One Nights. Penguin Classics L71. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957.

  79. Dawood, N. J., trans. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. 1954-57. 2nd ed. 1973. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.


  80. René R. Khawam (1917-2004) – [7 vols: 1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)

  81. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. Traduction Nouvelle et Complète faite sur les Manuscrits par René R. Khawam. 4 Vols. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1965-67.

  82. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. 4 vols. 1965-67. 2nd ed. 1986. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1989.

  83. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Marin. Paris: Phébus, 1985.

  84. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Terrien. Paris: Phébus, 1986.

  85. Khawam, René R., trans. Le Roman d’Aladin. Paris: Phébus, 1988.


  86. Felix Tauer (1893-1981) – [8 vols: 1928-34] (Czech & German)

  87. Tauer, Felix, trans. Tisíc a Jedna Noc. 1928-34. 5 vols. 1973. Praha: Ikar, 2001.

  88. Tauer, Felix, trans. Erotische Geschichten aus den tausendundein Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext der Wortley Montague-Handschrift übertragen und herausgegeben von Felix Tauer. 1966. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983.

  89. Tauer, Felix, trans. Neue Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Die in anderen Versionen von »1001 Nacht« nicht enthaltenen Geschichten der Wortley-Montague-Handschrift der Oxforder Bodleian Library; Aus dem arabischen Urtext vollständig übertragen und erläutert von Felix Tauer. 2 vols. 1982. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1989.


  90. Husain Haddawy (?) – [2 vols: 1990-95] (English)

  91. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights: Based on the Text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.

  92. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995.

  93. Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ed. The Arabian Nights. The Husain Haddaway Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi: Contexts, Criticism. 1990 & 1995. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.


  94. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel (1930-2005 / 1929- ) – [10 vols: 1977-2001 & 2005-7] (French)

  95. Miquel, André. Un Conte des Mille et Une Nuits: Ajîb et Gharîb (Traduction et perspectives d’analyse). Paris: Flammarion, 1977.

  96. Miquel, André. Sept contes des Mille et Une Nuits, ou Il n’y a pas de contes innocents, suivi d’entretiens autour de Jamaleddine Bencheikh et Claude Brémond. Paris: Sindbad, 1981.

  97. Bremond, Claude, ed. Les Dames de Bagdad: Conte des Mille et une nuits. Trans. André Miquel / Claude Bremond, A Chraïbi, A. Larue, and M. Sironval. La Nébuleuse du conte: Essai sur les premiers contes de Galland. Paris: Desjonquères, 1991.

  98. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis. Trans. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, André Miquel & Touhami Bencheikh. 4 vols. Folio. Paris: Gallimard, 1991-2001.

  99. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005-7.

  100. Album Mille et Une Nuits: Iconographie. Choisie et commentée par Margaret Sironval. Albums de la Pléiade, 44. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.


  101. Prof. Malcolm C. & Dr. Ursula Lyons (1929-2019 / ?-2016) – [3 vols: 2008] (English)

  102. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. Penguin Classics Hardback. London: Penguin, 2008.

  103. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 1: Nights 1 to 294. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.

  104. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 2: Nights 295 to 719. Introduced & Annotated by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.

  105. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 3: Nights 719 to 1001. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.

  106. Lyons, Malcom C., trans. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange. Introduction by Robert Irwin. Penguin Classics. 2014. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2015.


  107. Salvador Peña Martín (1958- ) – [4 vols: 2016] (Spanish)

  108. Peña Martín, Salvador, trans. Mil y una noches. 4 vols. 2016. Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2018.


  109. Yasmine Seale (1989- ) – [2 vols: 2019-2021] (English)

  110. Seale, Yasmine, trans. Aladdin: A New Translation. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

  111. Seale, Yasmine, trans. The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights. Ed. Paulo Lemos Horta. Foreword by Omar El Akkad. Afterword by Robert Irwin. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.


  112. Miscellaneous

  113. Blyton, Enid. Tales from the Arabian Nights: Retold by Enid Blyton. Illustrated by Anne & Janet Johnstone. 1951. London: Latimer House, 1956.

  114. Bull, René, illus. The Arabian Nights. Children’s Classics. Bath: Robert Frederick, 1994.

  115. Ouyang, Wen-Ching, & Paulo Lemos Horta, ed. The Arabian Nights: An Anthology. Everyman’s Library 361. A Borzoi Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

  116. Pinson, R. W., ed. Märchen aus 1001 Nacht: Die berühmten Geschichten aus dem Morgenland. Selected by G. Blau, A. Horn & R. W. Pinson. 1979. Bindlach: Gondrom Verlaf GmbH, 2001.

  117. Samsó, Julio, trans. Antología de Las Mil y Una Noches. Libro de Bolsillo: Clásicos 599. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1975.

  118. Scott, Anne, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Retold by Vladimir Hulpach. Trans. Vera Gissing. Illustrated by Mária Zelibská. London: Cathay Books, 1981.

  119. Weber, Henry, ed. Tales of the East: Comprising the Most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin, and the Best Imitations by European Authors: with New Translations, and Additional Tales, Never Before Published: to which is prefixed an introductory dissertation, containing the account of each work, and of its author, or translator. 3 vols. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1812.
      Vol. I:
    • The Arabian Nights [Galland (1704-17)]
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments [Chavis & Cazotte (1788-89)]
    • Vol. II:
    • New Arabian Nights' Entertainments (cont.)
    • Persian Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Persian Tales of Inatulla [Alexander Dow (1768)]
    • Oriental Tales [A. C. P., Comte de Caylus (1749)]
    • Nourjahad [Frances Sheridan (1767)]
    • "Four Additional Tales from the Arabian Nights" [Caussin de Perceval (1806)]
    • Vol. III:
    • The Mogul Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Turkish Tales [Pétis de la Croix (1710)]
    • Tartarian Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Chinese Tales [Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1723)]
    • Tales of the Genii [James Ridley (1764)]
    • History of Abdalla the Son of Hanif [Jean Paul Bignon (1713)]

  120. Wiggin, Kate Douglas & Nora A. Smith, eds. The Arabian Nights: Their Best-Known Tales. Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1996.

  121. Williams-Ellis, Amabel. The Arabian Nights Stories Retold. 1957. London: Blackie, 1972.



Jack Ross: Arabian Nights Bookcase (30-7-2021)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Secondary Literature:

  1. Abou-Hussein, Hiam & Charles Pellat. Cheherazade: Personage Littéraire. Algiers: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 1976.

  2. Ali, Muhsin Jassim. Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981.

  3. Baroud, Mahmoud. The Shipwrecked Sailor in Arabic and Western Literature: Ibn Tufail and His Influence on European Writers. London & New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2012.

  4. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine. Les Mille et une Nuits ou la parole prisonnière. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

  5. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, Claude Bremond and André Miquel. Mille et un Contes de la Nuit. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.

  6. Campbell, Kay Hardy, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Andras Hamori, Muhsin Mahdi, Christopher M. Murphy, & Sandra Naddaff. The 1001 Nights: Critical Essays and Annotated Bibliography. Mundus Arabicus 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Dar Mahjar, 1983.

  7. Caracciolo, Peter L., ed. The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.

  8. Chauvin, Victor. Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885. 12 vols. Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1892-1922.
    • Vol. 1: Préface (pp. v-xxxix). 1892.
    • Vol. 2: Kalîlah. 1897.
    • Vol. 3: Louqmâne et les Fabulistes. Barlaam. Antar et les Romans de chevalerie. 1898.
    • Vol. 4: Les 1001 Nuits (1ere partie). 1900.
    • Vol. 5: Les 1001 Nuits (2ème partie). 1901.
    • Vol. 6: Les 1001 Nuits (3ème partie). 1902.
    • Vol. 7: Les 1001 Nuits (4ème partie). 1903.
    • Vol. 8: Syntipas. 1904.
    • Vol. 9: Recueils Orientaux. (pp. 57-95). 1905.
    • Vol. 10: Table des Matières. (pp. 145-46). 1907.

  9. Chauvin, Victor. La Récension Égyptienne des Mille et Une Nuits. Bruxelles: Office de Publicité / Société Belge de Librairie, 1899.

  10. Chebel, Malek. Psychanalyse des Mille et Une Nuits. 1996. Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 2002.

  11. Diyāb, Hannā. The Book of Travels. Trans. Elias Muhanna. Foreword by Yasmine Seale. Introduction by Johannes Stephan. Afterword by Paulo Lemos Horta. Library of Arabic Literature, 87. 2021. New York: New York University Press, 2022.

  12. Eliséef, Nikita. Thèmes et motifs des Mille et Une Nuits: Essai de Classification. Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1949.

  13. Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.

  14. Ghazoul, Ferial Jabouri. The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis. Cairo: Cairo Associated Institution for the Study and Presentation of Arab Cultural Values, 1980.

  15. Ghazoul, Ferial J. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context. Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.

  16. Hamori, Andras. On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature. 1974. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

  17. Horta, Paulo Lemos. Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.

  18. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nightmare. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.

  19. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Allen Lane, 1994.

  20. Kilito, Abdelfattah. L’oeil et l’aiguille: Essai sur “les mille et une nuits.” Textes à l’appui: série islam et société. Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1992.

  21. Lahy-Hollebecque, Marie. Schéhérazade ou L’éducation d’un Roi. 1927. Collection Destins de Femmes. Paris: Pardès, 1987.

  22. Lane, E. W. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 1836. Ed. E. Stanley Poole. Everyman’s Library 315. London: Dent, New York: Dutton, 1963.

  23. Larzul, Sylvette. Les Traductions Françaises des Mille et Une Nuits: Études des versions Galland, Trébutien et Mardrus. Précédée de “Traditions, traductions, trahisons,” par Claude Bremond. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.

  24. Lewis, Bernard. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. 1982. London: Phoenix, 1994.

  25. Lynch, Enrique. La Lección de Sheherazade. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1987.

  26. Mahdi, Muhsin. The Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

  27. Marzolph, Ulrich, & Richard van Leeuwen, with the assistance of Hassan Wassouf, ed. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2004.

  28. Marzolph, Ulrich, ed. The Arabian Nights Reader. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2006.

  29. May, Georges. Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland, ou le chef d’oeuvre invisible. Paris: P.U.F., 1986.

  30. Naddaff, Sandra. Arabesque: Narrative Structure and the Aesthetics of Repetition in the 1001 Nights. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

  31. Nicholson, Reynold A. A Literary History of the Arabs. 1907. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.

  32. Pinault, David. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. Studies in Arabic Literature 15. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992.

  33. Ranelagh, E. J. The Past We Share: The Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature. London: Quartet, 1979.

  34. Sallis, Eva K. Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of the Thousand and One Nights. Curzon Studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.

  35. Von Grunebaum, Gustave E. Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation. 1946. Phoenix Books 69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

  36. Weber, Edgard. Imaginaire Arabe et Contes Erotiques. Collection Comprendre le Moyen-Orient. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1990.


Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994)




Monday, August 29, 2022

Sir John Lubbock's 100 Books


Sir John Lubbock: The Pleasures of Life (1887)


One fateful evening in 1886, the Principal of the London Working-Men’s College, Sir John Lubbock, gave a speech to that institution. In it he outlined a list of 100 vital books which, if read attentively, might in themselves constitute a liberal education.

The idea took off with a vengeance, and after the list was reprinted in his essay-collection The Pleasures of Life, earnest self-improvers everywhere started to collect the various volumes.


Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913)


Lubbock himself never attended university, though he came from a privileged background, and had been educated at Eton by his wealthy family. A banker by profession, his real passions were archaeology and evolutionary biology, and he wrote extensively on both subjects.

Amongst other achievements, he was the the first to coin the terms "Neolithic" and "Palaeolithic" in one of his books about early man.


Antoine Galland: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments (London: Routledge, 1865)


The very first copy of the Arabian Nights I ever owned (rather similar to the one pictured above, but more battered and dogeared) proudly proclaimed itself as one of these "hundred books" - which gives some clue to the bonanza this must have constituted for enterprising publishers in the late nineteenth century.


Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure (1894-95)


It's easy to see how this idea of self-betterment through focussed reading informs Hardy's last prose masterpiece Jude the Obscure, with its almost unbearably poignant account of rural autodidact Jude's attempts to enter the sheltered cloisters of Christminster University through sheer effort and application. All in vain, of course (it is, after all, a Thomas Hardy novel).

There's a particularly poignant scene where Jude is sitting miserably by the side of the road realising the folly of his grand ambitions, and longing for someone to come by and comfort him:
But nobody did come, because nobody does: and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.



18 of the 100 Books (London: Routledge, 1890)
[The Shi King of Confucius; The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer; Darwin's Journal of Discoveries; The Origin of Species; The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I and II; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; Captain Cook's Voyages; Humboldt's Travels I-III; Scott's Ivanhoe; La Morte D'Arthur; Spinoza; The Arabian Nights' Entertainments; Bacon's Novum Organum; The Nibelungenleid; Thackeray's Pendennis]


Here, in any case, is a slightly tidied-up list of the original 100 books. It's rather hard to make the numbers fit consistently, given Lubbock's habit of listing multiple works under one author or, alternatively, listing separate works by a writer under different categories. He also published different versions of it at different times.

Each entry has been linked to a free online text wherever possible.


LIST OF 100 BOOKS
[Works by Living Authors are omitted]

  1. The Holy Bible
  2. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
  3. Epictetus
  4. Aristotle’s Ethics
  5. The Analects of Confucius
  6. St Hilaire’s Le Bouddha et sa religion
  7. Wake’s Apostolic Fathers
  8. Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ
  9. Confessions of St. Augustine
  10. The Koran
  11. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
  12. Comte’s Catechism of Positive Philosophy
  13. Pascal’s Pensées
  14. Butler’s Analogy of Religion
  15. Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying
  16. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
  17. Keble’s Christian Year
  18. Plato’s Apology, Phædo, & Republic
  19. Xenophon’s Memorabilia
  20. Aristotle’s Politics
  21. The Public Orations of Demosthenes
  22. Cicero’s Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
  23. Plutarch’s Lives
  24. Berkeley’s Human Knowledge
  25. Descartes’ Discours sur la Méthode
  26. Locke’s On the Conduct of the Understanding
  27. Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey
  28. Hesiod
  29. Virgil
  30. Lucretius [1]
  31. The Mahabharata & The Ramayana [Epitomized in Talboy Wheeler’s History of India]
  32. Firdausi’s Shahnameh [Included in Persian Literature]
  33. The Nibelungenlied
  34. Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
  35. The Shi King [or Book of Songs]
  36. Kalidasa’s Sakuntala [or The Lost Ring]
  37. Aeschylus’ Tragedies and Fragments & Trilogy
  38. Sophocles’ Oedipus
  39. Euripides’ Medea
  40. Aristophanes’ The Knights & The Clouds [In Comedies]
  41. Horace
  42. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
  43. Shakespeare
  44. Milton’s Paradise Lost & minor poems
  45. Dante’s Divina Commedia (Cary’s translation) (Longfellow’s translation)
  46. Spenser’s Faerie Queene
  47. Dryden’s Poems [vol 1 & vol 2]
  48. Scott’s Poems [The Lady of the Lake & Marmion]
  49. Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer & The Curse of Kehama [vol 1 & vol 2]
  50. Selected Poems of William Wordsworth
  51. Pope's Essay on Criticism; Essay on Man; Rape of the Lock and Other Poems
  52. Burns
  53. Byron’s Childe Harold
  54. Gray [in The Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett]
  55. Herodotus [vol 1 & vol 2]
  56. Xenophon’s Anabasis
  57. Thucydides
  58. Tacitus’ Germania
  59. Livy
  60. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  61. Hume’s History of England
  62. Grote’s History of Greece
  63. Carlyle’s French Revolution
  64. Green’s Short History of England
  65. Lewes’ History of Philosophy [vol 1 & vol 2]
  66. The Arabian Nights
  67. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
  68. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
  69. Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield
  70. Cervantes’ Don Quixote
  71. Boswell’s Life of Johnson
  72. Molière
  73. Schiller’s William Tell
  74. Sheridan’s The Critic, School for Scandal, & The Rivals
  75. Carlyle’s Past and Present
  76. Bacon’s Novum Organum
  77. Smith’s Wealth of Nations
  78. Mill’s Political Economy
  79. Cook’s Voyages
  80. Humboldt’s Travels [vol 1, vol 2 & vol 3]
  81. White’s Natural History of Selborne
  82. Darwin's Origin of Species & Naturalist’s Voyage
  83. Mill’s Logic
  84. Bacon’s Essays
  85. Montaigne’s Essays
  86. Hume’s Essays
  87. Macaulay’s Essays
  88. Addison’s Essays
  89. Emerson’s Essays
  90. Burke’s Select Works
  91. Smiles’ Self-Help
  92. Voltaire's Zadig & Micromegas
  93. Goethe’s Faust & Autobiography
  94. Miss Austen’s Emma, or Pride and Prejudice [2]
  95. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair & Pendennis
  96. Dickens' Pickwick, David Copperfield
  97. Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii
  98. George Eliot’s Adam Bede
  99. Kingsley’s Westward Ho!
  100. Scott’s Waverley Novels



Notes:

1. Lubbock notes that this is “less generally suitable than most of the others in the list.”
2. Lubbock chose later to omit this entry, commenting that English novelists were “somewhat over-represented.”

A revised version of the list was published in 1930, after Lubbock's death, with the following substituted entries:
  • Comte’s Catechism [no. 12] was replaced by Seneca
  • Dryden’s Poems [no. 47] was replaced by Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
  • Hume’s Essays [no. 86] was replaced by Ruskin’s Modern Painters




Even making due allowance for the era in which it was compiled, it remains a somewhat surprising selection. There are only two female authors - both English novelists - and Lubbock eventually chose to omit Jane Austen and retain only George Eliot. Even there, it's her first novel Adam Bede, rather than the more mature Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda, which makes the cut.

There's also what would now seem a disproportionate emphasis on Christian theology, ancient and modern. I count no fewer than ten such volumes, ranging from Saint Augustine to Keble's Christian Year. By contrast, there's one book on Buddhism, another on Confucianism, one on Hinduism, and another on Islam.

There are ten British novelists there, too. But who would now think to include Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Kingsley among their number? Cervantes, Goethe, and Voltaire are the only other fiction writers on the list. It's odd, moreover, to see the latter represented by Zadig and Micromegas rather than the more obvious Candide.

It's only to be expected, given Victorian ideas on education, that the Greek and Roman classics should make up a substantial part of the listings - Poets such as Homer, Hesiod, Horace, Lucretius & Virgil; Dramatists such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides & Aristophanes; Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius; Historians such as Herodotus, Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, Thucydides & Xenophon; Orators such as Demosthenes & Cicero ... In total, they make up almost a quarter of the readings.

To do him justice, Lubbock himself was the first to admit the limitations of his project:
It is one thing to own a library; it is quite another to use it wisely. I have often been astonished how little care people devote to the selection of what they read. Books, we know, are almost innumerable; our hours for reading are, alas! very few. And yet many people read almost by hazard. They will take any book they chance to find in a room at a friend's house; they will buy a novel at a railway-stall if it has an attractive title; indeed, I believe in some cases even the binding affects their choice.

The selection is, no doubt, far from easy. I have often wished some one would recommend a list of a hundred good books. If we had such lists drawn up by a few good guides they would be most useful. I have indeed sometimes heard it said that in reading every one must choose for himself, but this reminds me of the recommendation not to go into the water till you can swim.

In the absence of such lists I have picked out the books most frequently mentioned with approval by those who have referred directly or indirectly to the pleasure of reading, and have ventured to include some which, though less frequently mentioned, are especial favorites of my own. Every one who looks at the list will wish to suggest other books, as indeed I should myself, but in that case the number would soon run up.
He goes on to specify:
I have abstained, for obvious reasons, from mentioning works by living authors, though from many of them — Tennyson, Ruskin, and others —I have myself derived the keenest enjoyment; and I have omitted works on science, with one or two exceptions, because the subject is so progressive.

I feel that the attempt is over bold, and I must beg for indulgence, while hoping for criticism; indeed one object which I have had in view is to stimulate others more competent far than I am to give us the advantage of their opinions.
There's a lot more detail about his specific choices in chapter 4 of The Pleasures of Life, which makes very interesting reading. His reservations about some of the inclusions are particularly revealing. For instance:
Nor must I omit to mention Sir T. Malory's Morte d'Arthur, though I confess I do so mainly in deference to the judgment of others.
Or, on the subject of which novelists to include:
Macaulay considered Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne the best novel in any language, but my number is so nearly complete that I must content myself with English: and will suggest Thackeray (Vanity Fair and Pendennis), Dickens (Pickwick and David Copperfield), G. Eliot (Adam Bede or The Mill on the Floss), Kingsley (Westward Ho!), Lytton (Last Days of Pompeii), and last, not least, those of Scott, which indeed constitute a library in themselves, but which I must ask, in return for my trouble, to be allowed, as a special favor, to count as one.

Pierre de Marivaux: La Vie de Marianne (1731-45)


Strangely enough, I've actually read La Vie de Marianne. It's a surprisingly entertaining novel, given that its principal subject is the endless rehearsal of the sufferings and woes of the title character - whom I'd always assumed to have been suggested by Samuel Richardson's Pamela in his 1740 novel of that name. Now, however, I see that the dates don't fit, and that if there was influence, it must have been in the opposite direction.

I'm not sure that I'd put it in any lists of must-reads, mind you, but then that just illustrates the invidiousness of such choices. The moment you start to legislate about such things, you end up putting in bizarre tomes such as Samuel Smiles' Self-Help rather than, say, Marx's Das Kapital.

Would it do a modern reader any harm to sit down and start reading their way through Sir John Lubbock's hundred books? No, I don't think so. At the very least it would give you quite a good idea of the classical idea of the canon - as it stood in the late nineteenth century.

I'm not sure that it would do you all that much good, though. You'd have to substitute more reliable texts on the world's great religions, more up-to-date histories than Carlyle's or Grote's, and a greatly increased number of books on economics and science. In fact, you might end up with something like this:




Britannica: Great Books of the Western World (1990)


The Britannica Great Books of the Western World series was first published, as a set of 54 volumes, in 1952:
The original editors had three criteria for including a book in the series drawn from Western Civilization: the book must have been relevant to contemporary matters, and not only important in its historical context; it must be rewarding to re-read repeatedly with respect to liberal education; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas", relevant to at least 25 of the 102 "Great Ideas" as identified by the editor of the series's comprehensive index, ... dubbed the "Syntopicon".
A second edition, enlarged to 60 volumes, was published in 1990. Among other revisions, "Four women authors were included, where previously there were none."

You can look at the original lists in the Wikipedia article above. I suspect that most of us probably have a few odd volumes of the series kicking around. The double-columns of print and large format make them difficult to read, but they are a useful source for otherwise difficult to locate texts. I see that I myself own ten of them - marked below in bold - though I've never consciously collected them:
  1. The Great Conversation
  2. Syntopicon I
  3. Syntopicon II
  4. Volume 4: Homer (rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler)
    • The Iliad
    • The Odyssey
    Homer. The Iliad & The Odyssey. Trans. Samuel Butler. 1898. Great Books of the Western World, 4. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. 1952. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1989.
  5. Aeschylus / Sophocles / Euripides / Aristophanes
  6. Herodotus / Thucydides
  7. Plato
  8. Volume 8: Aristotle I
    • Categories
    • On Interpretation
    • Prior Analytics
    • Posterior Analytics
    • Topics
    • Sophistical Refutations
    • Physics
    • On the Heavens
    • On Generation and Corruption
    • Meteorology
    • Metaphysics
    • On the Soul
    • Minor biological works
    Aristotle. The Works, Volume 1. Ed. W. D. Ross. Great Books of the Western World, 8. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  9. Volume 9: Aristotle II
    • History of Animals
    • Parts of Animals
    • On the Motion of Animals
    • On the Gait of Animals
    • On the Generation of Animals
    • Nicomachean Ethics
    • Politics
    • The Athenian Constitution
    • Rhetoric
    • Poetics
    Aristotle. The Works, Volume 2. Ed. W. D. Ross. Great Books of the Western World, 9. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  10. Hippocrates / Galen
  11. Volume 11:
    • Euclid
      • The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
    • Archimedes
      • On the Sphere and Cylinder
      • Measurement of a Circle
      • On Conoids and Spheroids
      • On Spirals
      • On the Equilibrium of Planes
      • The Sand Reckoner
      • The Quadrature of the Parabola
      • On Floating Bodies
      • Book of Lemmas
      • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
    • Apollonius of Perga
      • On Conic Sections
    • Nicomachus of Gerasa
      • Introduction to Arithmetic
    Euclid. The Thirteen Books of the Elements / Archimedes. The Works, Including the Method / Apollonius of Perga. On Conic Sections / Nichomachus of Gerga. Introduction to Arithmetic. Trans. Thomas L. Heath, R. Catesby Taliaferro, & Martin L. D’Ooge. 1926 & 1939. Great Books of the Western World, 11. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  12. Lucretius / Epictetus / Marcus Aurelius
  13. Virgil
  14. Volume 14: Plutarch
    • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (translated by John Dryden)
    Plutarch. The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (The Dryden Translation). Great Books of the Western World, 14. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  15. Tacitus
  16. Volume 16:
    • Ptolemy
      • Almagest, (translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro)
    • Nicolaus Copernicus
      • On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
    • Johannes Kepler (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
      • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV–V)
      • The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
    Ptolemy. The Almagest / Copernicus. On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres / Kepler. Epitome of Copernican Astronomy: IV & V; The Harmonies of the World: V. Trans. R. Catesby Taliaferro, & Charles Glenn Wallis. Great Books of the Western World, 16. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  17. Plotinus
  18. St. Augustine
  19. Volume 19: Thomas Aquinas
    • Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
    Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica, 1. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 1941. Rev. Daniel J. Sullivan. Great Books of the Western World, 19. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  20. Volume 20: Thomas Aquinas
    • Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
    Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica, 2. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 1941. Rev. Daniel J. Sullivan. Great Books of the Western World, 20. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  21. Dante
  22. Chaucer
  23. Machiavelli / Hobbes
  24. Rabelais
  25. Montaigne
  26. Shakespeare I
  27. Shakespeare II
  28. Gilbert / Galileo / Harvey
  29. Cervantes: Don Quixote
  30. Sir Francis Bacon
  31. Descartes / Spinoza
  32. Milton
  33. Pascal
  34. Newton / Huygens
  35. Locke/ Berkeley / Hume
  36. Swift: Gulliver's Travels / Sterne: Tristram Shandy
  37. Fielding: Tom Jones
  38. Montesquieu / Rousseau
  39. Adam Smith
  40. Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I
  41. Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire II
  42. Kant
  43. American State Papers / Hamilton, Madison, Jay: The Federalist / John Stuart Mill
  44. Boswell: Life of Johnson
  45. Lavoisier / Fourier / Faraday
  46. Hegel
  47. Goethe: Faust
  48. Melville: Moby Dick
  49. Darwin
  50. Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels
  51. Tolstoy: War and Peace
  52. Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  53. Volume 53: William James
    • The Principles of Psychology
    James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Great Books of the Western World, 53. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
  54. Volume 54: Sigmund Freud
    • The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
    • Selected Papers on Hysteria
    • The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
    • The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
    • Observations on "Wild" Psycho-Analysis
    • The Interpretation of Dreams
    • On Narcissism
    • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
    • Repression
    • The Unconscious
    • A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
    • Beyond the Pleasure Principle
    • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
    • The Ego and the Id
    • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
    • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
    • Civilization and Its Discontents
    • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
    Freud, Sigmund. The Major Works. Great Books of the Western World, 54. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.



Again it seems, in retrospect, 70 years on, quite an odd list. It's very anglocentric, for a start: Boswell's Life of Johnson, a whole slew of novels and other literary works easily available elsewhere ... but it does represent a certain advance on Lubbock, insofar (at least) that it admits upfront its 'Western' orientation - if you'll forgive the pun.

The editors were well aware of this, however, so when they revised it in 1990, they added six new volumes of more contemporary material: one on Philosophy, one on Science, one on Economics, one on Anthropology, and two on Modernist Literature (you can see further details here).

Like all such grand intellectual enterprises, however, it looks now more like an index of the blind-spots in the late twentieth-century mind than a truly satisfactory summary of the best of Western thought.




Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)


So what's my conclusion? "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes," as Henry Thoreau put it so succinctly (or, as in this case, new book-bindings). But he went on to say: "and not rather a new wearer of clothes" - which is perhaps the nub of the matter.

No set list of readings will produce an original, free-thinking intellect, whether it be Sir John Lubbocks's 100 books, the Britannica Great Books, the Harvard Classics, or The Sacred Books of the East. That's not to say that such collections of books have no abiding usefulness, however - it's probably better to take them as a series of local guides than as a grand, overarching index to the nature of the universe, however.

And, in the meantime, it can be useful - and salutary - to skim through such lists and remind yourself of just how far you've fallen short of the minimum knowledge expected of either a nineteenth-century or a more contemporary 'common reader'!




David Morrell & Hank Wagner: Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (2010)