Oriental tales in 18th-century manuscripts … and in English translation

Abstract

Bio-bibliography arguably forms the core of all research into the textual history of the Arabian Nights and its related materials.11In the context of this article, ‘Arabian Nights’ and ‘Nights’ is used loosely to refer, in general terms, to all tales that were considered to belong to the genre of the corpus or genre of the Thousand and one Nights by 18th-century English authors. References to a particular edition or version will include the name of the author, editor or translator. In the first part of this article, I would like to offer a small contribution to that line of research, through a detailed study of a group of Arabic manuscripts preserved at Cambridge University Library, of their provenance, and of the narratives contained therein. In the second part, I will use the Cambridge texts and their 18th-century translation as the basis for a discussion of critical responses to the Nights.