1896 Rare Book - The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments by Mrs. Sugden
An exceptionally attractive late-Victorian edition of the Arabian Nights, presented in a brilliant pictorial cloth binding and retaining its vivid colour frontispiece.
Author: Hon. Mrs. Sugden, arranger.
Title: The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments: Arranged for the Perusal of Youthful Readers.
Publisher: London, George Routledge and Sons, The Broadway, Ludgate; New York, 9 Lafayette Place, [1896].
Edition: Victorian illustrated edition, arranged and adapted for youthful readers.
Language: English.
Pages: vii, 501 pages, followed by publisher’s advertisement.
Size: 7.5" x 5".
Binding: Very good original publisher’s bright red cloth binding, elaborately blocked in black, green, and gilt. The front board features a striking floral and geometric design surrounding a large gilt title panel and a gilt pictorial vignette, with corresponding decoration and gilt lettering to the spine. Rear board decorated in blind. Minor rubbing and light wear to the extremities, chiefly at the corners and spine ends, but the cloth remains remarkably bright and the elaborate decoration exceptionally well preserved. Binding tight and sound. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good. Pages are clean and well preserved with only light age toning and occasional minor spotting consistent with age. Decorative initials, headpieces, and ornaments throughout. Small bookseller’s ticket of A. & R. Milne, Aberdeen, to the upper front pastedown. No ownership inscriptions noted. A particularly pleasing example internally.
Illustrations: Complete with the full-page colour frontispiece, retaining strong, rich colouring, together with numerous decorative initials and typographical ornaments throughout the text.
Estimate: USD 150–250.
The book:
This handsome Victorian edition presents the great tales of the Arabian Nights in a form specifically arranged for younger readers. In her preface, Mrs. Sugden explains that the collection was prepared to provide families with an edition freed from material considered unsuitable for children, while preserving the stories that had made Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sindbad the Sailor, and their companions perennial favourites. Among the tales included are The History of Sindbad, the Sailor, Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp, and The History of Ali Baba, and of the Forty Robbers Killed by One Slave.
Much of the appeal of this copy lies in its spectacular publisher’s binding. The vivid scarlet cloth, richly ornamented with gilt, black, and green blocking, belongs to the flourishing Victorian tradition of decorative gift books, when publishers transformed popular literary classics into objects designed to be displayed as well as read. Surviving copies are frequently encountered with considerable rubbing or fading; the brightness and completeness of the present binding make it particularly attractive for collectors of nineteenth-century pictorial cloth and illustrated fairy-tale literature.
The editor:
The Hon. Mrs. Sugden prepared this adaptation of the Arabian Nights specifically for Victorian family reading, condensing and modifying the traditional stories while retaining their adventure, fantasy, and narrative variety. Her arrangement became sufficiently popular to be issued by George Routledge & Sons in a number of bindings and formats during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Her edition belongs to a broader Victorian movement that brought traditional fairy tales, legends, and world literature into the nursery through carefully edited texts and increasingly elaborate illustrated editions. In this particularly decorative Routledge production, the familiar stories are paired with one of the period’s most appealing forms of commercial book design.