The tales of the Genii; or the delightful lessons of Horam, the son of Asmar.London, printed for G. and T. Wilkie, 1786. 2 volumes. 12mo. With 2 letterpress title-pages and 14 engraved plates (including the 2 frontispieces) illustrating the various tales. Near contemporary, uniform calf (ca. 1800?), gold-tooled smooth spines in 6 fields, with a green (title) and red (volume) label in the 2nd and 4th fields, gold-tooled board edges, blind-tooled turn-ins.

xxxvi, 285, [3 blank]; [1], [1 blank], 338 pp. plus 2 frontispieces and 12 other plates.Rare edition of a series of stories based on those of the Arabian nights, first published in 1764 and written by James Kenneth Ridley (1736-1765) but issued under the pen name "Sir Charles Morell", supposedly a former ambassador to the Great Mogul representing the British settlements in India. Ridley's Tales were allegedly composed by an imam named Horam and translated from a Persian manuscript; in actuality, they were products of Ridley's imagination. They belong to a genre of imitation orientalia popular in the 18th century.The plates include illustrations of Idan and her two daughters Liberak and Hirab, Adhum and Kaphira in the forest of Gorvov, the merchant Abudah in the groves of Shadaski, and the fair Urad on the rocks of the Tigris River.In the 1820 edition it became a favourite of the young Charles Dickens and had a significant impact on several of his works, including Great expectations.Each volume with a ca. 1930? bookplate (with a pseudo-Arabian woman and incense burner) of Clemens Haro Beels (1889-1972), Dutch book collector and author of a 1967 book on heraldic bookplates, on the front paste-down. Occasional soiling, spotting or offsetting of plates to the facing text page, but still in good condition. Rare edition of a collection of “oriental” tales, and one of Dickens's favourite works.l ESTC T074888S; Friedman, “Ridley's Tales of the Genii and Dickens' Great expectations”, in: Nineteenth-century literature 44 (1989), pp. 215-218; T. Rimer, “Tales of the Genii and Great expectations” (on www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/geweb/rimer2.htm); not in Duizend min één boek.