# Is "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night" by Richard F. Burton (translator) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night by Richard F. Burton (translator) (Kama Shastra Society, 'Benares' [i.e. London], 1885) is identified by: Ten volumes, 'Benares: Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private Subscribers Only. The census overstates Burton's primacy in two directions and both need naming.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Ten volumes, 'Benares: Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private Subscribers Only
- MDCCCLXXXV'
- , followed by six Supplemental Nights volumes, 1886-1888 — sixteen large octavo volumes in all
- Limited to 1,000 numbered sets for private subscribers, issued with Burton's guarantee that no larger printing would ever be made in this form
- Original publisher's black cloth: the first ten volumes blocked in gilt, the six supplemental volumes in silver; black glazed (coated) endpapers, top edges stained red, title pages printed in red and black
- The decisive separation from the reprints is the copyright line on the versos of the title pages — variously 'Copyright... by Ellis Spear' or by Philip Justice — together with the stencilled set number recorded on the verso of the front pastedown of volume I; reprints carry neither
- Publisher imprint reads Kama Shastra Society, 'Benares' [i.e. London]

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard F. Burton (translator) |
| Publisher | Kama Shastra Society, 'Benares' [i.e. London] |
| Year | 1885 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Ten volumes, 'Benares: Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private Subscribers Only |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Ten volumes, 'Benares: Printed by the Kamashastra Society for Private Subscribers Only. MDCCCLXXXV' (1885), followed by six Supplemental Nights volumes, 1886-1888 — sixteen large octavo volumes in all. Limited to 1,000 numbered sets for private subscribers, issued with Burton's guarantee that no larger printing would ever be made in this form. Original publisher's black cloth: the first ten volumes blocked in gilt, the six supplemental volumes in silver; black glazed (coated) endpapers, top edges stained red, title pages printed in red and black. The decisive separation from the reprints is the copyright line on the versos of the title pages — variously 'Copyright... by Ellis Spear' or by Philip Justice — together with the stencilled set number recorded on the verso of the front pastedown of volume I; reprints carry neither. The 'Benares' imprint is itself a fiction: the Kama Shastra Society was a paper organisation of Burton and F. F. Arbuthnot invented to sidestep the obscenity statutes, and the sheets were printed in England (Stoke Newington is the location usually cited), not in India. Stray listings quote limitation figures other than 1,000; the standard descriptions and Burton's subscription terms give 1,000 numbered sets, and outliers should be discounted.

## Is this the true first?
The census overstates Burton's primacy in two directions and both need naming. Antoine Galland's 'Les mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en françois', Paris: la Veuve Claude Barbin and successors, 12 volumes 1704-1717, is the first European translation and the edition that created the Western canon — Aladdin and Ali Baba included, the so-called orphan tales that appear in no Arabic manuscript source and enter world literature here. In English, the first complete and unexpurgated translation is not Burton's but John Payne's 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night', London: Villon Society, 9 volumes 1882-1884, privately printed and limited to 500 numbered copies; Burton drew heavily on Payne — by his own account with permission — and Payne afterwards made his irritation plain. Burton's 1885-88 Kama Shastra set is correctly identified as the collected annotated English translation collectors pursue, and the Terminal Essay is his alone, but it is the second complete English rendering, not the first. Collections that take this text seriously hold Payne and Burton together, with Galland alongside for the French.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
There is no book club edition in the ordinary sense; the reprint problem here is worse than one, and it catches experienced buyers. Isabel Burton issued an expurgated 'Household Edition' after her husband's death, and from about 1903 the 'Burton Club' — the pseudonym of a Boston publisher — acquired the electroplates and issued a long series of undated reprints running well into the 1920s, printed from the original setting and reproducing the 'Benares' imprint verbatim. Penzer identified nine 'catch-word' Burton Club issues distinguished only by fictitious imprints — Benares, Mecca, Medinah, Aden, Baghdad, Samara, Bassorah, Shammar, Luristan — appearing roughly every two years after 1905, and no definitive list or sequence of them exists. Burton Club sets are undated, lack the stencilled subscriber's number and the Ellis Spear / Philip Justice copyright line, and are routinely catalogued and sold as '1885 Benares first editions'. Burton Society and later 'Manuscript Edition' sets (e.g. 99 sets with an autograph Burton leaf, ca. 1903, in red morocco) describe themselves openly in the limitation as transcriptions of 'the original edition dated Benares 1885' — read the limitation leaf before the title page.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night* by Richard F. Burton (translator) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-book-of-the-thousand-nights-and-a-night
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.