1825 Scarce Book Set - The Tales of the Genii, Translated from the Persian by Sir Charles Morrell.
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(Description)
Author: Morell, Charles (i.e. Ridley, James).
Title: The Tales of the Genii. Translated from the Persian. With Memoirs of the Author. In Two Volumes.
Language: Text in English.
Publisher: New Tork, Published by D. Mallory, 1825. Complete 2 volumes set.
Size: 5 " X 3.5 ".
Pages: x-247, 252 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good brown quarter morocco leather binding over patterned covers (hinges fine, overall slightly scuffed - as shown) under a protective mylar cover.
Content: Good content (bright and tight, light foxing and staining throughout - as shown, gift note of a previous 1885 owner on the first endpaper - as shown).
Illustration: Complete with the 2 nice frontispiece illustrations.
Estimate: (Scarce with no or few other copies for sale worldwide).
The books: Scarce 2 volume edition by Mallory Publisher of The Tales of the Genii: or, the Delightful Lessons of Horam, The Son of Asmar which is a collection by the English author James Ridley, consisting of Oriental pastiche fantasy tales modeled on those of the Arabian Nights. The work was originally passed off as an authentic work by a Persian imam named Horam translated into English by "Sir Charles Morell, formerly ambassador from the British Settlements in India to the Great Mogul" and published by an anonymous "editor." It is the work for which Ridley is chiefly remembered.
The author: James Kenneth Ridley (1736–1765) was an English author, who was educated at University College, Oxford. He served as a chaplain with the British Army. He is best known for a volume of imitation Orientalia. He is mainly remembered for his Oriental pastiche The Tales of the Genii, a set of stories based on those of the Arabian Nights. That work, published in two volumes in 1764, was issued under the pseudonym "Sir Charles Morell", supposedly British Ambassador at Bombay.
Ridley's Tales were allegedly composed by an imam named Horam and translated from a Persian manuscript, but in actuality, they were products of Ridley's imagination. They belong to a genre of imitation Orientalia popular in the 18th century. In its own time and after, Ridley's book was compared to Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. It retained its popularity and had gone through seven editions by 1861. Translations into German and French also appeared.