Edward Julius Detmold and his twin brother Charles Maurice Detmold were prolific Victorian book illustrators. They spent time with another uncle, the painter Henry E. Detmold, who encouraged them in their art. The twins subsequently mastered the techniques of watercolour etching and of colour printing with copper plates, buying a printing press and producing their own proofs at home.
In 1909 E.J. Detmold worked the illustrations for the Fables of Aesop and in 1911 illustrations for Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Life of the Bee“, Camille Lemonnier’s “Birds and Beasts” and “The Book of Baby Beasts“.
In the following year he worked on Maeterlinck’s “Hours of Gladness“, in 1915 on “Book of Baby Birds” and in 1919 on “Birds in Town and Village”. In 1919 he also produced a portfolio of “Twenty Four Nature Pictures” and in 1921 on “Our Little Neighbours” and Jean-Henri Fabre‘s “Book of Insects“.
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (c. 1706–1721), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.
The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central and South Asia, and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Greek, Jewish and Turkish folklore and literature.
Edward Julius Detmold became one of the most talented of illustrators, depicting animals and plants with an extraordinary understanding, and making use of fantasy settings of architecture and landscape.
Some of the stories commonly associated with The Nights, in particular “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”, were not part of The Nights in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators.
Presenting E.J. Detmold’s masterpiece, the illustrations for the First edition of The Arabian Nights. Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1924.
Art Gallery: Edward Julius Detmold – The Arabian Nights 1924
