Tan cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Decorative Cloth. Condition: Very Good. Various (illustrator). Odhams Press, London, UK, ca 1937. Illustration of Aladdin’s lamp on front, 704 pp. 17 full-page B&W illustrations. 50 strange tales of the Orient by Sax Rohmer, Harold Lamb, Achmed Abdullah, Algernon Blackwood, H.R. Haggard, P.S. Buck, many others. Many rare, weird stories here. Overall this is good to very good copy of an old, collectible collection of offbeat tales. Interior looks good and unmarked; attractive spooky designs on endpapers.

Review: This was apparently compiled and published in 1937. It does show its age, and some of the stories, or comments in them do not ‘age well’. However some of the stories are vividly descriptive, and enthralling reads, enough to support some more pedestrian, easily forgotten, ‘time expired’ pieces. It includes work by (then and now) well known writers, Pearl S. Buck, Somerset Maugham, Sax Rohmer, Joseph Conrad to name a few. There also appears to be a number of pseudonyms – including Field Marshall Slim. The fame of the author does not necessarily reflect in the quality of the story. I read it in batches, dipping in over a few months. Like all ‘short’ story collections, a ‘mixture’, including the longest which in itself is a Desert caravan version of Canterbury Tales. Well worth dipping into, a sense of historical perspective is a must.