SOURCE: Knipp, C. “The The Arabian Nights in England: Galland's Translation and Its Successors.” Journal of Arabic Literature 5 (1974): 44-54.

In the following essay, Knipp offers a reevaluation of Antoine Galland's early-eighteenth-century translation of The Arabian Nights, arguing that despite its limitations, the work should be regarded as the preeminent translation, a creative work, and a version that is as faithful to the original source as could have been rendered.

The story of the translations of the Arabian Nights is a colorful and even lurid one. In this story's English segment, very close to center stage, gesticulating wildly, is Sir Richard Burton—explorer, adventurer, polemicist, orientalist, scribbler, and enemy of Victorian morality. We might as well begin with him, since the curtain will not go down anyway until he has done his turn. Here is how Burton, already waving both sock and buskin, begins the Foreword of his edition...