The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Carefully Revised And Occasionally Corrected From Arabic. To Which Is Added, A Selection Of New Tales, Now First Translated From The Arabic Originals. (Six Volumes) Scott, Jonathan

1st ed thus, 6 volumes, half-leather boards with marbled sides, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, gilt titles spine. Engraved frontis plate each volume: six different illustrations, engraved after paintings by Robert Smirke. Some rubbing to the boards, gift inscription blank prelim page each volume. Very good condition. First edition of the Jonathan Scott edition, which was the earliest effort to render the Arabian Nights into literary English. Jonathan Scott (1754 - 1829) ) was an English orientalist, working here mainly from Antoine Galland's French version of the Arabian Nights but also adding new tales from the Edward Wortley Montagu manuscript brought back from Turkey. This edition, complete in six volumes and with an extensive introduction by Scott, can be said to have popularised the One Thousand and One Nights and brought these marvellous Middle Eastern folktales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age to the English-speaking world.