Library of Congress Blogs

'The Arabian Nights'

From the wonderful resources at the Library of Congress. Read this book about the tales of 'Scheherazade'.

The 'Preface' was written by the Editor, Kate Douglas Wiggin and is particularly charming, recalling the more romantic use of English in 1909 and a gentler time.

'Nowhere in the whole realm of literature will you find such a Marvel, such a Wonder, such a Nonesuch of a book; nowhere will you find impossibilities so real and so convincing; nowhere but in what Henley calls:

" ... that blessèd brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance.
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream tarts, and lettered apes, and Calenders,
And ghouls and genies- O so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower,
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post;
In truth the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sinbad, Scheherazade
The peerless, Bedridden, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
and Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk-
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms-
Of Kaf ... That centre of miricales
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights."

August, 1909.'

http://www.read.gov/books/arabian-knights.html

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