1. The Arabian Nights

2. Background First collected stories written AD 800–900 Stories come from the Middle East and South Asia. The roots of many tales can be traced back to mythology and the cultures of such areas ass Arabia, Yemen, India, Persian, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor. Some of the most famous stories appear to have been added to the collection in European editions ("Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp," "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.“) These particular stories are probably genuine Middle Eastern folk tales but were not part of the "Nights" in its Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by its early European translators.

3. Important Versions The first European version of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights (1704-1717) was translated into French by Antoine Galland from an Arabic text and other sources. This was a 12-volume book. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) by Sir Richard Francis Burton, was ten-volume translation of Galland (he added six more volumes later). Though printed in the Victorian era it contained all the erotic nuances of the source material. He avoided strict Victorian laws on obscene material by printing a private edition for subscribers only. The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, edited by Andrew Lang (1898), was one volume, heavily edited for children and illustrated by H. J. Ford.

4. The Frame Story Details differ, but Scheherazade is always the daughter of the Grand-Vizier and willingly marries the sultan, thus beginning the stories. The different versions have different individually detailed endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life.

5. A collection of memorable images from The Arabian Nights

6. Exotic imagery excited Western minds The Sultana Held Conversation with a Man. Arabian Nights - Illustrated by Virginia Frances Sterrett. Penn Publishing Company, 1928.

7. Ford’s Illustrations from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments Frontispiece Scheherazade, Dinarzade, and the Sultan The Sultan pardon’s Scheherazade

8. Ford’s illustration (1898) The Princess veils herself when she sees the Monkey The Genius and the Merchants

9. Images from Sinbad’s Voyages

10. More of Ford’s illustrations The king of China looks at the ring on the princess's finger. The genius comes out of the jar

11. Ford’s illustrations from Aladdin Aladdin's mother brings the slaves with the forty basins of gold before the sultan. The slave of the ring appears to Aladdin