New Arabian Nights
Author | Robert Louis Stevenson |
---|---|
Country | Scotland |
Language | English |
Genre | Short stories |
Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1882 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Followed by | More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter |
New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1882, is a collection of short stories previously published in magazines between 1877 and 1880. The collection contains Stevenson's first published fiction, and a few of the stories are considered by some critics to be his best work, as well as pioneering works in the English-language short story tradition.[1][2]
Structure
New Arabian Nights is divided into two volumes.
Volume 1
The first volume contains seven stories originally called Later-day Arabian Nights and published by London Magazine in serial format from June to October 1878. It is composed of two story groups, or cycles:
- "The Suicide Club"
- "The Rajah's Diamond"
Volume 2
The second volume is a collection of four unconnected (standalone) stories that were previously published in magazines:
- "The Pavilion on the Links" (1880), told in 9 mini-chapters
- "A Lodging for the Night" (1877)
- "The Sire De Malétroits Door" (1877)
- "Providence and the Guitar" (1878)
Allusions to other works
The title is an allusion to the collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights, which Stevenson had read and liked. Although Stevenson's stories were set in modern Europe, he was stylistically drawing a connection to the nested structure of the Arabian tales.
As in A Thousand and One Nights, where we have a caliph named Harun the Orthodox, who wanders through the streets of Baghdad in disguise, here in The New Arabian Nights by Stevenson, we have Prince Florizel of Bohemia, who wanders through the streets of London in disguise.
— Jorge Luis Borges[3]
Two eagerly awaited translations of the Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton and John Payne, were in the works in the late 1870s and early 1880s, further helping to draw popular attention to Stevenson's "New" title.[4]
Literary significance and criticism
"A Lodging for the Night" was Stevenson's first ever published fiction. In 1890 Arthur Conan Doyle characterized "The Pavilion on the Links" as "the high-water mark of Stevenson's genius" and "the first short-story in the world".[2] Barry Menikoff (1987) considers New Arabian Nights to be the starting point in the history of the English-language short story.[1]
References
- ^ a b Menikoff, Barry (1987), "Class and Culture in the English Short Story", Journal of the Short Story in English 8 (1987), pp. 125-39.
- ^ a b Menikoff, Barry (1990), "New Arabian Nights: Stevenson’s experiment in Fiction", Nineteenth-Century Literature 43 (iii 1990), pp. 339-62.
- ^ Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature. New Directions Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9780811218757. P. 240.
- ^ López-Calvo, Ignacio (24 January 2012). Peripheral Transmodernities: South-to-South Intercultural Dialogues between the Luso-Hispanic World and "the Orient". ISBN 9781443837262.
External links
- The full text of New Arabian Nights at Wikisource
- New Arabian Nights at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
- ""New Arabian nights"". Internet Archive. Retrieved 19 June 2021. (scanned books original editions illustrated)
- New Arabian Nights public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
- e
- An Inland Voyage (1878)
- Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1878)
- Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)
- The Silverado Squatters (1883)
- Memories and Portraits (1887)
- Across the Plains (1892)
- Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892)
- The Amateur Emigrant (1895)
- Treasure Island (1883)
- Prince Otto (1885)
- Kidnapped (1886)
- The Black Arrow (1888)
- The Master of Ballantrae (1889)
- The Wrong Box (1889, with stepson)
- The Wrecker (1892, with stepson)
- Catriona (1893)
- The Ebb-Tide (1894, with stepson)
- Weir of Hermiston (1896, unfinished)
- St. Ives (1897, unfinished)
collections
- The Suicide Club (1878)
- The Rajah's Diamond (1878)
- New Arabian Nights (1882)
- More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885)
- The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887)
- Island Nights' Entertainments (1893)
- Tales and Fantasies (1905)
- "The Pavilion on the Links" (1880)
- "Thrawn Janet" (1881)
- "The Merry Men" (1882)
- "The Body Snatcher" (1884)
- "Markheim" (1885)
- "Olalla" (1885)
- "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886)
- "The Bottle Imp" (1891)
- "The Beach of Falesá" (1892)
- "The Isle of Voices" (1893)
- A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
- Underwoods (1887)
- Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
- Lloyd Osbourne
- Fanny Stevenson
- Isobel Osbourne
- The Student, newspaper
- Mount Vaea
- Writers' Museum
- Robert Louis Stevenson State Park
- Stevenson Memorial (1903 painting)
- The Story of a Recluse (unfinished)
- Category