The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 13

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.5
Word count
1.2M words
Chapters
124

Tags

English Originals Folk LiteratureWorld Classics Wealth LegendsMagical TalesHumanity TestEmbedded NarrativeMiddle Eastern StyleExotic Adventure

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 13 by BurtonAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PJ: Language and Literatures: Oriental languages and literatures, Release Date: Sep 1, 2002

Editor's review

This volume is the thirteenth in Richard Burton's multi-volume English translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night, part of Project Gutenberg's free eBook series, in English, classified under Oriental languages and literatures. It continues the style characteristic of Burton's translation—detailed and expansive, with extensive notes and appendix material—and offers reference value for understanding story backgrounds, folk beliefs, and narrative traditions. Its barrier to entry lies not in plot but in language and format: archaic English expressions, dense footnotes, and continuity between volumes all demand patience. As a public-domain eBook, it is better suited as research material or a text for comparative reading than as an introductory reader for those seeking fluid stories. Readers interested in how Arabic narrative literature was received in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world, or who need to check Burton's wording and notes, will want this volume at hand for reference.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and prefatory material to establish the volume's place in the whole work before entering the main text.
  2. Keep pen and paper or a digital notebook to record characters, story motifs, and cross-volume echoes.
  3. When notes are dense, skip them first and return to the relevant explanations after finishing a story unit.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112
  113. 113
  114. 114
  115. 115
  116. 116
  117. 117
  118. 118
  119. 119
  120. 120
  121. 121
  122. 122
  123. 123
  124. 124

FAQ

Do I need to read the earlier volumes first? This is the thirteenth volume of a multi-volume work, and its stories and notes often echo earlier volumes. If you only want to browse individual stories, you can read selectively; if you care about the overall structure and Burton's annotation system, it is best to first understand the basic format of earlier volumes, which will make this volume easier to follow.
How does Burton's translation differ from common fairy-tale editions? Burton's translation retains extensive notes, folkloric explanations, and archaic English expressions, with greater length and information density than children's adaptations. It is closer to a nineteenth-century scholarly, documentary translation, suitable for reference and research rather than for light reading.
Can I read this book with average English proficiency? You can try, but be prepared. The text contains archaic vocabulary, long sentences, and dense notes, and readers with average English proficiency may lose rhythm between notes and main text. It is advisable to start with shorter story units and proceed slowly with a dictionary, without forcing yourself to finish at once.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.