Legend

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night

by Richard Francis Burton

Richard Burton’s translation was printed for subscribers in ten volumes from 1885, under the name of a Kama Shastra Society that was really Burton and a few friends, which kept it out of reach of the obscenity laws. Its English is deliberately antique and its footnotes are famously frank. This first volume holds the frame story of King Shahryar and Shahrazad and the first of the nights.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 11 hr 40 min

Where to find it

On the Legend shelves

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #3435. In the public domain in the United States.