Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton also complied a translation of the
Alf layla wa layla, otherwise known as
A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, or the
Arabian Nights, or the
Book of 1000 Nights and a Night, or whatever other titles European
Orientalist writers were slapping on their versions at the time. Burton apparently felt Lane's take on the whole story, indeed the entire saga, was through a lens of
Victorian sensibility,
Christian morality,
cultural superiority and
Puritanical rationalism. Burton, by then in retirement from soldiering and spying, sat down and did a translation so true to the original
Persian text it led to an uproar in
British high society at the time and Burton's wife ended up burning the rather
lurid,
violent and
erotic manuscripts after Burton's death. Particularly offensive to the lady was the book of often racy or dark lithographic plates which accompanied the 12 volumes of Burton's text.
(...if you're ever in the area of McGill in Montreal, swing by the Rare Books library and I'll dig it out...)
Parts: One,
Two,
Three,
Four