1993 reissued classic; "The Arabian Nights, Their Best-Known Tales", edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith; illustrated by Maxfield Parrish; Charles Scribner's Sons publishers, New York; hardbound with dark cerulean blue boards and gilt lettering and decor on cover and spine; wonderful condition with color illustrations; dust jacket very good also.
 
Description -
Arabian Nights is a commonly used English title for One Thousand and One Nights, a Middle-Eastern folk tale collection.
 
The collection of Middle Eastern folk tales was compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706 – c. 1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.
 
The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان‎, lit. A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements.
 
What is common throughout all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer.
 
Some of the stories commonly associated with The Nights, in particular "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", were not part of The Nights in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators.
 
This Reissued Classic edition-
The Talking Bird, The Singing Tree, and The Golden Water;
The Story of the Fisherman and the Genie;
The History of the Young King of the Black Isles;
The Story of Gulnare of the Sea;
The Story of Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp;
The Story of Prince Agib;
The Story of The City of Brass;
The Story of Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves;
The History of Codadad and His Brothers; and
The Story of Sinbad the Voyager.