Description

shocked, outraged, and delighted the English reading public by publishing an unexpurgated sixteen-volume edition (1885-1888) of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. By including not only the strange and miraculous, but also the very frank treat-ment of sex and its perversions, the more savage stories of brutality and corruption, and the historical and semihistorical anecdotes, Burton won the respect and admiration of the intellectual community of the day. And his translation is acknowl-edged still as the definitive rendering of the Arabian Nights into English for its exceptional accuracy, masculine vitality, and literary discernment, and brooks no competition.

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