3 Richard F. Burton first editions are documented on this shelf, from Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1855) to The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Richard F. Burton title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
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- Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah — 1855 · Longman, Brown, Green, and LongmansThe true first edition appeared in three octavo volumes: volumes I ('El-Misr') and II ('El-Medinah') were published in 1855, with the concluding volume III ('Meccah') following in 1856 after Burton's manuscript, delayed in transit from India, finally reached the publisher. Collation is xiv, [1], 388; iv, 426; x, [1], 448 pages, illustrated with a folding map at the front of volume I, thirteen plates (five in…. Because the work was issued in parts, a complete first-edition set requires volumes I-II dated 1855 and volume III dated 1856 as originally published; a set with all three volumes uniformly dated 1855 is not possible and should be treated with caution. A posthumous 'Memorial Edition' of Burton's works, prepared under the direction of his widow Isabel Burton, reprinted the Pilgrimage in 1893; this later edited reprint is textually and physically distinct from the 1855-56 first edition described above.
- The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration — 1860 · Longman, Green, Longman, and RobertsThe true first edition was published in two octavo volumes (pagination xvi, [2], 412; vi, [2], 468 pp.), illustrated with twelve chromoxylographed plates and a large engraved, tinted folding map bound at the rear of volume II. The true first issue is bound in plum-colored cloth; unsold sheets were subsequently rebound in red cloth for remainder sale, which is markedly more common on the market. A later state of…. Burton's findings were first laid before the public in his paper 'The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa,' printed in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. 29 (published April 1860) and drawn on directly for the book's topographical material; because that journal printing preceded or was closely contemporary with the two-volume Longman edition, specialist dealers sometimes market a set of the….
- The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — 1885 · Kama Shastra Society, 'Benares' [i.e. London]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…. 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…. 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….
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