The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night: Rendered from the literal and complete version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus; and collated with other sources; by E. Powys Mathers. Privately Printed For Subscribers The Casanova Society.

London: Casanova Society, 1923 .. Limited edition. 4 volume set in matching quarter calf bindings. 9.25" x 6.25" x 1.75". 8vo. Blue leather spines with gilt titles, sunned and rubbed, over mottled blue boards. Top page edges gilt, other page edges rough cut. Clean text throughout, just a little light toning to endpapers and extreme page edges. Each volume with a coloured frontis and tissue guard. Volume 1 states: "This edition ... is limited to 750 sets of 16 volumes on antique paper ... and 1500 sets on bond paper in 4 volumes, each set numbered 751 to 2250 ... n.� 2057." A well preserved set. ** "Edward Powys Mathers (28 August 1892 � 3 February 1939) was an English translator and poet, and also a pioneer of compiling advanced cryptic crosswords. Powys Mathers was born in Forest Hill, London, the son of a newspaper proprietor.[1] He was educated at Loretto and Trinity College, Oxford. He is well known as the translator of J. C. Mardrus's French version of One Thousand Nights and One Night. His English version of Mardrus appeared in 1923, and is known as Mardrus Mathers. He is known also for the translations The Garden of Bright Waters: One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems (1920); and of the Kashmiri poet Bilhana in Bilhana: Black Marigolds (1919), a free interpretation in the tradition of Edward FitzGerald. These are not scholarly works, and are in some cases based on intermediate versions in European languages. Some of his translations were set to music by Aaron Copland. He was also a composer of cryptic crosswords for The Observer under the pseudonym "Torquemada" from 1926 until his death. Under this pseudonym, he reviewed detective stories from 1934 to 1939.