Tales of the Genii, Translated from the Persian

[Sixth edition]. xii, [2], 480pp.  Fully bound in brown calf’s leather with gilt lettering on a red leather spine label.  32mo.  Boards are heavily worn, heavily rubbed all round edges, leather marked and scuffed at ends of a dry and brittled spine.  Text block edges evenly toned to dark.  Both hinges cracked, with some spotting and staining on endpapers. Some faint and occasional foxing throuighout but text block generally neat, clean and tight.  A good readable/reference copy and a prime candidate for restoration/rebinding.  

The Tales of the Genii, first published in two volumes in 1764, is a collection of Oriental-style pastiche fantasy tales isimilar to the better-known The Arabian Nights.  The work purported to be a translation of an authentic text by a Persian Iman, Horam,  translated into English by Sir Charles Morell, ‘formerly ambassador from the British Settlements in India to the Great Mogul’.  It was in fact almost entirely the work of the English chaplain and author James Ridley  (1736-65).  Ridley’s book was commercially successful and popular.  This sixth edition was publsihed after Ridley had been recognised as the originator and includes a brief memoir of Ridley not present in some earlier editions,  It was the last early 19th century edition: two further editions were produced later in the 19th century, in 1849 and 1861, but were revised, ‘purified and remodelled…with a vuew of developing a religious moral’ by Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin and are widely considered inferior.  Despite dwindling popularity, Ridley’s tales remained culturally influential: Charles Dickens’ juvenile play. Misnar, is based on the sixth tale, and the collection’s influence on Coleridge’s Kubla Khan has been remarked upon..