These were in an awful state when I took possession of them. I think I haggled the seller down to about a third of the asking price as I knew I’d have to have them rebound in order to make them readable. The original back and front boards were fine, if a bit dirty, as you can see, but they were present. The spines for all, however, were destroyed. I took them to my go-to place of repair, Cameron Bookbinders, and sent them a picture of what the original spines looked like, from a set on sale for far more than I could afford, and they made up a plate, which they gave me along with the repaired books.
I obtained them off the back of Campbell’s Introduction to his ‘Popular Tales.’ I’ve read Lane’s interesting introduction to the first volume and there’s a lot of technical information on the translating of the texts from the original Arabic. I’ve not, however, had a chance to get into the stories themselves.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vols. 1-3, London: C. Knight & Co., Spines.
Imprint Plate created by Cameron Bookbinders, Glasgow, in order to recreate the Spines.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vols. 1-3, London: C. Knight & Co., Front Cover.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vols. 1-3, London: C. Knight & Co., Back Cover.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vol. 1, London: C. Knight & Co., Title Page.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vol. 1, London: C. Knight & Co., Publisher’s Page.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vol. 2, London: C. Knight & Co., Title Page.
E. W. Lane (1841), ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Vol. 2, London: C. Knight & Co., Publisher’s Page.
Beautiful!