The exact title is _The Book of the Thousand and One Nights_.
It contains two hundred and sixty-two tales, although the
original edition omits one of the most famous, the story of
_Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp_. Antoine Galland was the
first translator into a European language. His French version
was issued in 1717, in twelve volumes. Sir Richard Burton,
who translated an unexpurgated edition of _The Arabian
Nights_, with many notes and an essay on the sources of the
tales, ascribed the fairy tales to Persian sources. Burton's
edition gives all the obscene allusions but he treated the
erotic element in the tales from the scholarly standpoint,
holding that this feature showed the Oriental view of such
matters, which was and is radically different from the
Occidental attitude.
Burton's work was issued by subscription in 1885-1886 in ten
volumes and is a monument to his Oriental scholarship. Burton
left at his death the manuscript of another celebrated
Oriental work, _The Scented Garden_, but Lady Burton, who was
made his executrix, although offered L25,000 for the
copyright, destroyed the manuscript. She declared that she
did this to protect her husband's name, as the world would
look upon his notes as betraying undue fondness for the
erotic, whereas she knew and his close friends knew that this
interest was purely scholarly. Scholars all over the world
mourned over this destruction of Burton's work.
Another noteworthy unexpurgated translation was by John
Payne, prepared for the Villon Society, and issued in
1882-1884.
The best English translation is by E. W. Lane, an English
Orientalist, whose notes are valuable. The editions of _The
Arabian Nights_ are endless, and many famous artists have
given the world their conception of the principal characters
in these Arabian wonder stories.