1326. The Gesta Romanorum, written in Latin. This was a compilation, by the monks, of stories with a moral appended to each. It was the most popular story-book before the invention of printing. In England it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, of which edition the only known copy is at St. John's College, Cambridge. The earliest manuscript of the collection is dated 1326. Between 1600 and 1703 fifteen editions of the book prove its popularity. One English version is by Sir Frederick Madden, who lived 1801-73. The author of the Gesta Romanorum is unknown, but was likely a German. The stories included are miscellaneous and vary in different editions. Among its stories are Oriental tales, tales of the deeds of Roman Emperors, an early form of Guy of Warwick, the casket episode of The Merchant of Venice, a story of the Jew's bond, a tale of the Emperor Theodosius, being a version of King Lear, the story of the Hermit, and a tale of Aglas, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Pompey, being a version of Atalanta and her Race.
1000 A.D. (about). Shah-Nameh, or King-book of Persia, by Ferdousee, born about 940 A.D. This book is the pride and glory of Persian literature. It was written by the Persian poet at the command of the king, who wished to have preserved the old traditions and heroic glories of Persians before the Arabian conquest. Ferdousee declared that he invented none of his material, but took it from the Bostan-Nameh or Old-Book.
The King-Book is very ancient, it is the Persian Homer. It was the labor of thirty years. It consisted of 56,000 distichs or couplets, for every thousand of which the Sultan had promised the poet one thousand pieces of gold. Instead of the elephant-load of gold promised, the Sultan sent in payment 60,000 small silver coins. This so enraged the poet that he gave away one third to the man who brought them, one third to a seller of refreshments, and one third to the keeper of the bath where the messenger found him. After the poet's death the insult was retrieved by proper payment. This was refused by his one daughter, but accepted by the other and used to erect a public dike the poet had always desired to build to protect his native town from the river. The fine character of the tales of the King-Book is shown in the tale of Roostem and Soohrab, taken from this book, which Keightley has translated in Tales and Popular Fictions. Keightley considered it superior to any Greek or Latin tale. Modern literature knows this tale through Matthew Arnold's poem.
1548 (not later than). The Thousand and One Nights, Arabian. 12 volumes. Galland's French translation appeared in 1704. This was supplemented by Chavis and Cazotte, and by Caussin de Percival. Monsieur Galland was Professor of Arabic in the Royal College of Paris. He was a master of French and a fairly good scholar of Arabic. He brought his manuscript, dated 1548, to Paris from Constantinople. He severely abbreviated the original, cutting out poetical extracts and improving the somewhat slovenly style. In his translation he gave to English the new words, genie, ogre, and vizier. His work was very popular.
Boulak and Calcutta texts are better than the Galland. They contain about two hundred and fifty stories. The Cairo edition has been admirably translated by Edward W. Lane, in 3 volumes (1839-41) published in London. This is probably the best edition. It also omits many poetical quotations. A recent edition using Lane's translation is by Frances Olcott, published by Holt in 1913. Editions which attempt to be complete versions are by John Payne (13 volumes, 1882-84), and by Sir Richard Burton (16 volumes, 1885-88). Lane and Burton give copious notes of value. The recent edition by Wiggin and Smith used the editions of Scott and Lane.
The stories in Arabian Nights are Indian, Egyptian, Arabian, and Persian. Scenes are laid principally in Bagdad and Cairo. Lane considered that the one hundred and fifteen stories, which are common to all manuscripts, are based on the Pehlevi original. The idea of the frame of the story came from India. This was the birth of the serial story. There is authority for considering the final collection to have been made in Egypt. Cairo is described most minutely and the customs are of Egypt of the thirteenth century and later. The stories must have been popular in Egypt as they were mentioned by an historian, 1400-70. Lane considered that the final Arabic collection bears to Persian tales the same relation that the Æneid does to the Odyssey. Life depicted is Arabic, and there is an absence of the great Persian heroes. Internal evidence assists in dating the work. Coffee is mentioned only three times. As its use became popular in the East in the fourteenth century this indicates the date of the work to be earlier than the very common use of coffee. Cannon, which are mentioned, were known in Egypt in 1383. Additions to the original were probably made as late as the sixteenth century. The Arabian Nights has been the model for many literary attempts to produce the Oriental tale, of which the tales of George Meredith are notable examples.
Thomas Keightley, in Tales and Popular Fictions, considered Persia the original country of The Thousand and One Nights, and The Voyages of Sinbad, originally a separate work. He showed how some of these tales bear marks of Persian extraction and how some had made their way to Europe through oral transmission before the time of Galland's translation. He selected the tale, "Cleomedes and Claremond," and proved that it must have been learned by a certain Princess Blanche, of Castile, and transmitted by her to France about 1275. This romance must have traveled to Spain from the East. It is the same as "The Enchanted Horse" in The Thousand and One Nights, and through Keightley's proof, is originally Persian. Keightley also selected the Straparola tale, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird, and proved it to be the same as Grimm's Three Little Birds, as a Persian Arabian Night's tale, and also as La Princesse Belle Etoile, of D'Aulnoy. But as Galland's translation appeared only the year after Madame D'Aulnoy's death, Madame D'Aulnoy must have obtained the tale elsewhere than from the first printed version of Arabian Nights.
No date. The Thousand and One Days. This is a Persian collection containing the "History of Calaf."
1550. Straparola's Nights, by Straparola. This collection of jests, riddles, and twenty-one stories was published in Venice. The stories were taken from oral tradition, from the lips of ten young women. Some were agreeable, some unfit, so that the book was forbidden in Rome, in 1605, and an abridged edition prepared. There was a complete Venetian edition in 1573, a German translation in 1679, a French one in 1611, and a good German one with valuable notes, by Schmidt, in 1817. Straparola's Nights contained stories similar to the German The Master Thief, The Little Peasant, Hans and the Hedge-Hog, Iron Hans, The Four Brothers, The Two Brothers, and Dr. Know-all.
1637. The Pentamerone, by Basile. Basile spent his early youth in Candia or Crete, which was owned by Venice. He traveled much in Italy, following his sister, who was a noted singer, to Mantua. He probably died in 1637. There may have been an earlier edition of The Pentamerone, which sold out. It was republished in Naples in 1645, 1674, 1714, 1722, 1728, 1749, 1788, and in Rome in 1679. This was the best collection of tales formed by a nation for a long time. The traditions were complete, and the author had a special talent for collecting them, and an intimate knowledge of dialect. This collection of fifty stories may be looked upon as the basis of many others. Basile wrote independently of Straparola, though a few tales are common to both. He was very careful not to alter the tale as he took it down from the people. He told his stories with allusions to manners and customs, to old stories and mythology. He abounds in picturesque, proverbial expressions, with turns and many similes, and displays a delightful exuberance of fancy. A valuable translation, with notes, was written by Felix Liebrecht, in 1842, and an English one by John Edward Taylor, in 1848. Keightley, in Fairy Mythology, has translated three of these tales and in Tales and Popular Fictions, two tales. Keightley's were the first translations of these tales into any language other than Italian. Among the stories of Basile are the German Cinderella, How Six got on in the World, Rapunzel, Snow White, Dame Holle, Briar Rose, and Hansel and Grethel.