Introduction: ‘Such a store house of ingenious fiction and of splendid imagery’

Abstract

Only to a limited extent does Weber’s statement hold true today. Pantomime, if nothing else, will have brought Aladdin and, if not Ali Baba, at least Sindbad the Sailor to the attention of late-twentieth-century children.¹ However, they probably will know little of Scheherazade’s desperate circumstances which force the telling of these tales. Modern selections from the Arabian Nights frequently omit one of the collection’s most distinctive features, the frame tale of how the beautiful and intelligent Scheherazade must spin out a succession of nocturnal tales to save not only her life but also the lives of the young women of her country who are in danger of the vengeance of her husband, the Sultan Shahriar.

There are few who do not recollect with pleasure the emotions they felt when the Thousand and One Nights were first put into their hands… It may be safely asserted, that such fictions as the magic lamp of Aladdin, and the cavern of the Forty Thieves, have contributed more to the amusement and delight of every succeeding generation since the fortunate appearance of these tales in this quarter of the world, than all the works which the industry and the imagination of Europeans have provided for the instruction and entertainment of youth. Such a store house of ingenious fiction and of splendid imagery, of supernatural agency skilfully introduced, conveying morality, not in the austere form of imperative precept and dictatorial aphorism, but in the more pleasing shape of example, is not to be found in any other existing work of the imagination.

(Henry Weber, Tales of the East [Edinburgh: John Ballantyne, 1812; London: Longman, 1812, 3 vols] i, i)