The Sea Serpent in the 1877 edition of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

Record summary

Nineteenth-century English editions of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments circulated several marine-monster episodes associated with Sindbad and other voyage narratives. These passages are identifiable through edition, translator, and tale numbering, but their content varies considerably from Burton’s later translation and from Arabic manuscript traditions. They offer a useful comparison point for how Victorian readers encountered “unknown creatures” through translated adventure literature. The uncertainty concerns which particular English edition and tale sequence a later cryptozoological author used, since citations are often imprecise.