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."

Yasmine Seale

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.

Paulo Lemos Horta: Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights (2017)

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)

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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



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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.



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

Translations:

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


4. 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.


5. 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.


6. 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.


7. 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.


8. 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.


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


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


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


11. 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.


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


12. 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.


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


13. 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.


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


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


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


15. 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.


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


16. 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.


17. 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.


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


19. 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.


20. 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.


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


21. 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)


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


23. 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.


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


24. 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.


25. 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.


26. 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].


27. 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].


28. 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.


29. 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.


30. 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.


31. 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.


32. 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.


33. 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.


34. 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.


35. 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.


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


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


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


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


38. 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.


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


39. 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.


40. 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.


41. 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].


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


43. 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.


44. 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.


45. 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.


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


46. 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.


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


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


48. 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.


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


49. 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.


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


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


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


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


52. 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.


53. 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.


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


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


55. 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.


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


56. 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.


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


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


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


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


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


60. 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.


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


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


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


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


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


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


66. 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.


67. 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.


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


68. 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.


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


70. 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.


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


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


72. 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.


73. 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.


74. 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.


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


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


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


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


78. 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.


79. 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.


80. 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.


81. 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.


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


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


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


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


84. 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.


Miscellaneous


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


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


87. 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.


88. 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.


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


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


91. 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)]


92. 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.


93. 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)

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Which Book Would You Most Like to Annotate?

The Ocean of Story (Bronwyn Lloyd: 27/12/17)

The other day we were playing one of those parlour games where you have to decide which great book you'd most like to annotate.

After all, when you come to think of it, the immense Ocean of Story (pictured above), is really nothing more than an annotated edition of C. H. Tawney’s two-volume, nineteenth-century translation of Somadeva’s Sanskrit epic the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (or Ocean of Streams of Story). Norman Penzer, Richard F. Burton's bibliographer, set out to emulate the master's classic ten-volume translation of the Arabian Nights (1885), with his own, similarly bound, 10-volume masterwork. Penzer may not have known much Sanskrit, but he knew a great opportunity when he saw one.

I put up a post some time ago about the multiple annotated editions of Bram Stoker's Dracula. "Marginalising Dracula," I called it (rather wittily, or so I thought at the time). Since then I've written a novel called The Annotated Tree Worship, so you can see the subject's been on my mind a bit.

Rumer Godden: The Doll's House (1948)

Our own discussion was provoked by Giovanni Tiso's longerm project of an annotated Dante, which he was outlining to us at the time. After a bit of reflection, Bronwyn went for Rumer Godden's The Doll House, explaining that she thought children's books were the most fun to examine in depth (though the example of the annotated Charlotte's Web is not very encouraging here, since its editor seems most interested in detailing E. B. White's proof corrections over the years to its myriad editions!).

A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) / The Story of O (1954)

I found myself toying with a number of alternatives: Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, possibly my favourite SF novel of all time; Pauline Réage's Story of O, a strange erotic classic, the truth about which only emerged a few years ago ... Somewhat staidly, I finally settled on the Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James.

M. R. James: The Collected Ghost Stories (1931)

I guess one reason for this is that I've already made a start on the task on this blog. I did a general post on M. R. James a few years ago, but then I followed it up with a more detailed commentary on one of his most enigmatic short stories, "Two Doctors," including a complete print-out of the text from the first edition, and sundry reflections of my own. Since then I've included "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" as one of the prescribed texts in my Stage 3 Advanced Fiction Course here at Massey.

The last time I ran into Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, he told me he was working on an illustrated (by which I assume he meant at least partially annotated) edition of Moby Dick as a companion volume to his fascinating version of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.

Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams: Illustrated Edition (2010)

I haven't yet seen it listed anywhere, but I have to confess that I'd really like to read it. Masson is a very brilliant man, and while I didn't get the impression that he knew that much about Herman Melville, he does seem to be very well informed about marine biology, so I'm sure his version would be replete with psychological insights into the that perennially vexed question: the whiteness of the whale.

For myself, I contented myself with recommending to him Harold Beaver's Penguin English Library edition, which includes a long commentary on the text as well as copious notes. Steve Donoghue describes it as "the work of a madman" in his blogpost "Eight Great Dicks", going on to call it "the most critically overloaded edition ever nominally intended for a mass-market audience." He does, however, conclude:

If you’re a reader who likes this kind of herbaceous annotation (I sure as Hell am), this is the edition for you.

I think you know enough about me by now to guess that it's my favourite edition, too.

But how about the rest of you? Which book (or books) are you longing to annotate? What authors have you been collecting obsessively since childhood, compiling a slew of useless detail you're just longing to unload on some poor bystander?

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, ed. Harold Beaver (1972)

Marginalising Dracula:

The Strange World of the Annotated Editions

[Leonard Wolf: The Annotated Dracula (1975)]

So I sent in an abstract for a projected anthology to be entitled Vampires and Zombies: Transnational Transformations. Strangely enough, they didn't take me up on my offer to contribute an essay on The Annotated Dracula (or, rather, all the editions of Bram Stoker's novel which have come out under that title or slight variations on same) - too frivolous-sounding, I guess.

In a way I'm not sorry, though. Spinning out my views into 7,000 words of ponderous Academic prose always did sound a bit too much like hard work. Instead, I thought I'd just post the main points here.

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[Sätty: Illustration for The Annotated Dracula (1975)]

"With Stoker's novel serving as the backbone, this one-volume Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to the world's most famous vampire looks at its author, its psychological and sociological implications, the stage plays, the movies, television versions, the actors, and, of course, the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler."

- Ad for Mark Dawzidiak's Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Dracula. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2008.

I mean, what's next? The Home Shopper's Guide to Dracula? Dracula Does Dallas? Tuesdays with Dracula? - Coming Soon to a Bloodbank Near You ... Is nothing sacred anymore? It would appear not.

A certain amount of the fangs - get it? "Fangs" - for this avalanche of drivel has to go to Leonard Wolf (no, not the one who used to be married to Virginia Woolf).

Born in Vulcan, Romania (Transylvania), Leonard was originally named 'Ludovic', changed upon his arrival in the United States in 1930 with his mother, Rose-ita [Cool name, don't you think? Even a little prophetic, perhaps ...]

- Wikipedia

Among his numerous other literary accomplishments, in 1972 he published A Dream of Dracula: In Search of the Living Dead, a book which has some claims to have started the modern Dracula revival.

In 1975, Wolf followed it up with The Annotated Dracula, an obsessively detailed and beautifully illustrated edition of Bram Stoker's novel.

There's something almost pure and spiritual (in retrospect) about the annotated editions of famous books produced by New York publisher Clarkson N. Potter and his various rivals and collaborators in the mid-sixties and seventies.

They include Isaac Asimov's - somewhat po-faced - annotated versions of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Byron's Don Juan, Milton's Paradise Lost, along with his Guide to the Bible and Guide to Shakespeare (not to mention Familiar Poems, Annotated). There were also beautiful editions of Thoreau's Walden (ed. Philip van Doren Stern, 1970) and Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (ed. Walter James Miller, 1976).

Two bona fide classics emerged from the process: Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice (1960 - now available in the 2000 "definitive edition"), which he followed up with the Annotated Snark (1962), and annotated versions of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1965) and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Friday (1999); and William S. Baring-Gould's 2-volume Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967), a mad compendium of everything then known about the detective and his several identities, morganatic wives, triple-headed assistant Dr John H. (or "James", as his - second? - wife addressed him on one occasion) Watson, with illustrations, chronological tables along with the full text of the canonical Four Novels and the Fifty-Six Short Stories ...

[W. S. Baring Gould: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967)]

Baring-Gould's book apart, the aims of this motley group of annotated texts, by a variety of editors (under a variety of imprints) were remarkably consistent. They consisted of informative contextual - and textual - notes on various matters designed to improve understanding and appreciation of great works of literature. Their status - and the value of the information they provided - depended very much on the scholarly standing of their respective editors.

Isaac Asimov's claims as an interpreter of poetry might have seemed (to anyone but himself) a little on the flimsy side, but then the works he chose to adorn (Swift, Milton - a shame he didn't get to do Dante, really) tended to have a strong science-fictional element which gave full scope to his delight in calculation and scientific patter. Martin Gardner's love of puzzles and paradoxes made him almost the ideal companion to Lewis Carroll (whose mathematical side he was able to do justice to almost for the first time).

The one striking exception was Baring-Gould. It's not that he wasn't an expert on Holmes. His 1962 book Sherlock Holmes: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective was actually the first - though not, alas, the last - biography of the famous sleuth. It's the approach he chose to take to the "canon" which was unusual and striking.

I mentioned in a previous post on J. R. R. Tolkien's posthumous creativity the phenomenon of Holmesian (or "Sherlockian", if you happen to be American) "Higher Criticism". This consists of:

writing essays about the Holmes canon which assume as a basic convention the actual existence of its central characters, and the subordinate role of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as Dr. Watson's literary agent.

Its inventor, Monsignor Ronald Knox, outlined the main lines of the method in one of the pieces in his 1928 book Essays in Satire, and the idea spread like wildfire - presumably because it appealed to the same kinds of people who enjoy crossword puzzles, acrostics, the Baconian theory of Shakespeare, the rehabilitation of Richard III, and other even more recondite parlour games.

Of course the main gag behind the "Higher Criticism" was nineteenth-century Biblical scholarship, which - especially in the hands of the more ponderous German textual critics - had produced a bewildering forest of double (and triple) "Isaiahs" and "Ezekiels", not to mention the immense number of people who had collaborated in, edited, revised, added to, garbled, and otherwise served to transmit the gospels and the first chapter of Genesis. Biblical criticism had the disadvantage of demanding a pretty good knowledge of Hebrew and Greek (not to mention Aramaic, Latin, German and a number of other dauntingly difficult tongues), though. The good thing about it was that the invention of a really juicy new hypothesis virtually guaranteed instant notoriety; the bad thing was that there was a good chance of losing your cushy academic job and being run out of town on a rail ...

Holmesian higher criticism, by contrast, was basically as safe as houses. It offended no-one and pleased almost everyone (except, one suspects, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his heirs). The only real risk was passing out from drinking too much at one of the annual dinners of the Baker Street Irregulars (whose inhouse magazine published most of the crucial articles in this increasingly intricate war of words).

Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, then, is as much of a memorial as it is a contribution to 40-odd years of footling speculation about Holmes's shoe-size, his Tibetan explorations, the vast number of pseudonyms under which he published scientific and other forms of research, his connections with Jack the Ripper and the Royal Families of Europe, etc. etc. etc. If you have no sense of humour, or - more to the point - no sense of the absurd, it's unlikely to strike you as a particularly profitable way of spending your time. If, however, you do, it might well qualify as a friend for life.

So what does all this have to do with Dracula, the ostensible subject of this post? Well, Wolf's Annotated Dracula is a very respectable contribution to the first generation of annotated tomes listed above. It's spectacular both in its size and the strange beatuy of its illustrations, and very informative on Stoker's sources for the first, "foreign" section of the novel (basically all cribbed from a variety of travel guides and histories, above all Emily Gerard's The Land Beyond the Forest (1888)). There's a good bibliography, a useful calendar of events in the novel, along with a rudimentary filmography and guide to the stage versions of the novel. There's no attempt to pretend that Dracula is real, or to treat it as anything but the classic Gothic novel it is.

Wolf followed it up two years later with an edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, reprinting the original, 1818, text of the novel, though with full notes on her subsequent rewritings and revisions of this first, most direct (and arguably best) version of the story.

And there, presumably, the story should have ended. How much more information about Dracula do you actually need?

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[Raymond McNally & Radu Florescu: The Essential Dracula (1979)]

Well, as it turns out, quite a bit.

In 1979, Raymond McNally and his colleague, the Romanian scholar Radu Florescu, collaborated on their own attempt at a comprehensive annotated edition, The Essential Dracula, which drew both on the Eastern European local detail outlined in their 1972 book In Search of Dracula, but also on the recent rediscovery of the manuscript notes for Stoker's novel.

There's no doubt that their book had a good deal to add to Wolf's basically humanist view of Dracula. Their research was thorough (and thoroughly up-to-date). The solid and unfanciful way in which they presented it had the effect of making Wolf look, at best, like a unspecialised enthusiast; at worst, like a bit of an amateur.

Don't get me wrong, when it came to the essentials, they were every bit as crazy as he was (one of McNally's subsequent books, about the so-called "Blood-Countess of Transylvania", was entitled Dracula was a Woman), but they somehow carried it off better.

It would be interesting to know more precise details about the relations between the two rival schools of Vampirology represented by McNally / Florescu and Wolf. Suffice it to say that when the latter was offered the chance to revise and update his 1975 book for a paperback edition in 1993, he called it (somewhat confusingly) The Essential Dracula, rather than some variation on the Annotated title of his original version.

[Leonard Wolf: The Essential Dracula (1993)]

An attempt to gazump his competitors? Who knows? That "definitive" subtitle is presumably meant as some kind of a dig at them. In any case, Wolf's Essential Dracula may lack the imposing dimensions (and sumptuous illustrations) of its predecessor, but it makes up for that in the detail of its information on (especially) the explosion of interest in all things vampire and Dracula-related in pop culture since the 1970s. It was the first of these books I actually owned, so I do owe it a debt for bringing me up to speed on Stoker and his methods (though of course it lacks the specific information about his working notes contained in Mcnally and Florescu's Essential Dracula).

And there, one is tempted to say, the saga really needed to come to an end. It was not to be, however.

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[Leslie Klinger: The New Annotated Dracula (2008)]

In 2008 Leslie S. Klinger (no relation, I assume, to the cross-dressing malingerer in M*A*S*H*), fresh from his immense (self-appointed) task of re-annotating Sherlock Holmes – three fat volumes in place of Baring-Gould's two – published The New Annotated Dracula.

Klinger’s sequel to Baring-Gould apes the latter's attempt to operate solely within the bounds of Holmesian Higher Criticism, but in a curiously half-hearted and unconvincing way. The freshness and daring of acting on this set of (basically fatuous) assumptions has turned into a kind of ponderous lip-service to the appearances, combined with an immense piling-up of often (alas) trivial period detail. Much of this would have been considered unnecessary for previous generations of readers, and there's an element of padding which would surely once have been ruthlessly edited out.

[Leslie Klinger: The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (2005-6)]

In this Klinger follows the example of other "second generation" annotated texts, notably those published by W. W. Norton & Company of New York. Some of these (the various editions of fairy tales edited by Maria Tatar spring to mind) are sound enough, if - at times - a trifle underwhelming. Some, however - notably the editions of Huckleberry Finn and The Wizard of Oz by Michael Patrick Hearn - also display the interesting property of drowning their originals in ill-considered trivia. This doesn't matter so much with L. Frank Baum, whose writing is loose enough to start with, but when one finds oneself yawning over Mark Twain, then clearly something has gone wrong.

Holmesian parlour-games can be played well or poorly, but there's nothing particularly shocking about them after approximately eighty years of such horseplay. Klinger's attempts to apply the same technique to Stoker's Dracula are, however, nothing short of disastrous. Bram Stoker has been relegated to the role of editor of the “Harker Papers”, and various hints are thrown out in the notes and introduction to suggest that the Count himself (who apparently survived the - staged? - death-scene at the end of the narrative) might have been instrumental in shaping the manuscript into its present form.

All of this seems harmless enough. It’s certainly in line with the many, many attempts which have already been made to write books (Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian (2005) being one prominent example) which supplement or intersect with the incidents and characters in Stoker’s story. The interesting thing is what a trivialising effect it ends up having on the book itself.

It's not that I mind the concept of inserting one's own silly notions into "classic" texts - especially one so eccentrically written as Dracula, with its elaborate epistolary framework of transcribed journals, newspaper articles, and even primitive audio recordings. It's just that the suspension of disbelief necessary for a ghost story tends to get lost in the process.

To give just one example, Klinger's rather far-fetched theory that the abridged version of his novel which Stoker produced shortly after its publication in 1897 somehow embodies "clues" about what is and is not integral to the narrative has resulted in a seemingly endless series of notes recording every variation between the two. He also records every misprint, down to the most trivial misspellings, in the original edition (which acts as his copytext). After one has added to this a number of notes explaining the concept of a "hansom cab", giving information on contemporary railway timetables and real estate values, the tone of almost hysterical fear and excitement which characterised Stoker's novel in its original form is, to say the least, somewhat diluted.

By all means use Stoker's text to illustrate some crazy notions of your own (a la Nabokov's insane narrator in Pale Fire (1962) - coincidentally (?), also the date of Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes), but to do so as confusingly as this does the original book no favours.

Yes, I read it to the end. Yes, there's a lot of interesting stuff in there (including some very pretty illustrations of contemporary equipment for dealing with "madmen" such as Renfield), but I have to say that my main feeling was disappointment. Do we really need four or five competing chronologies for Dracula? Wolf's original one may well need a little revision, after 35 years of increasingly recondite theorising, but it does have the advantage of being clear and serviceable. And at least he doesn't have to pretend to believe in vampires - or, rather, the vampire - all the time ...

I think it's time to call a moratorium on some of this extracurricular activity. Mind you, I suspect even Klinger's massive tome makes more exciting reading than Vampires and Zombies: Transnational Transformations will when it eventually appears ...

[Francis Ford Coppola: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)]