{"id":29650,"date":"2026-01-12T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T16:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=29650"},"modified":"2026-01-12T15:10:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T15:10:01","slug":"edmund-dulacs-princesse-badourah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2026\/01\/12\/edmund-dulacs-princesse-badourah\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmund Dulac&#8217;s Princesse Badourah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac01.jpg\" alt=\"dulac01.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Chinese princess is usually named Badoura in English editions of <em>The Thousand and One Nights<\/em> but <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/princessebadour00dula\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this volume<\/a> is a French book which reprints the art that Edmund Dulac created for a retelling of the story by Laurence Housman published in 1913. The English edition was itself a recycled volume, expanded from an earlier Housman\/Dulac collection, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/storiesarabian00housmiss\/storiesarabian00housmiss\/page\/n9\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Stories from the Arabian Nights<\/em><\/a> (1907). The story itself reads like an odd mirroring of some of the versions of <em>Aladdin<\/em> which end with the triumphant hero marrying a Chinese princess named Badroulbadour. The male character in <em>Princess Badoura<\/em> is Camaralzaman, the shy son of an Arabian king whose repudiation of women causes his father to throw him into a dungeon. As in <em>Aladdin<\/em>, a genie helps engineer events to bring the story to a happy resolution.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac02.jpg\" alt=\"dulac02.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some of the art may be recycled but the book design is better than the English editions, with gold frames embracing the tipped-in colour plates. The paintings are consequently reduced in size but this doesn&#8217;t harm them too much. One thing the book doesn&#8217;t contain is any clue to the writer of the text. I&#8217;d guess it was a translation of the Housman version but it could equally be a French retelling taken from another edition altogether.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac03.jpg\" alt=\"dulac03.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac04.jpg\" alt=\"dulac04.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac05.jpg\" alt=\"dulac05.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac06.jpg\" alt=\"dulac06.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac07.jpg\" alt=\"dulac07.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac08.jpg\" alt=\"dulac08.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac09.jpg\" alt=\"dulac09.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac10.jpg\" alt=\"dulac10.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac11.jpg\" alt=\"dulac11.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac12.jpg\" alt=\"dulac12.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac13.jpg\" alt=\"dulac13.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dulac14.jpg\" alt=\"dulac14.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/themed-archive-pages\/the-illustrators-archive\/\">The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chinese princess is usually named Badoura in English editions of The Thousand and One Nights but this volume is a French book which reprints the art that Edmund Dulac created for a retelling of the story by Laurence Housman published in 1913. The English edition was itself a recycled volume, expanded from an earlier &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2026\/01\/12\/edmund-dulacs-princesse-badourah\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Edmund Dulac&#8217;s Princesse Badourah&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Edmund Dulac's Princesse Badourah","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,21,48],"tags":[285,286,7304],"class_list":["post-29650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","tag-arabian-nights","tag-edmund-dulac","tag-laurence-housman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7Ie","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}