The Historical Nights’ Entertainment

So today I got a random e-mail from Amazon making me aware of the fact that a new printing of a Sabatini book just came out. I’ve only ever seen the title The Historical Nights’ Entertainment once or twice in bibliographies, so I don’t know much of what the deal is with this book (which is First Series, and there was apparently Second Series that Sabatini released as well). A Google search just brought me to many e-texts of the book, so all the info I’ve been able to find was what Sabatini apparently said himself in the preface:

In approaching The Historical Nights’ Entertainment I set myself the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the color available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events in the form of a story, I would compel that story scrupulously to follow the actual, recorded facts without owing anything to fiction, and I would draw upon my imagination, if at all, merely as one might employ color to fill in the outlines which history leaves grey, taking care that my color should be as true to nature as possible. For dialogue I would depend upon such scraps of actual speech as were chronicled in each case, amplifying it by translating into terms of speech the paraphrases of contemporary chroniclers.

So we have a collection of short historical stories, that’s all I know. Supposedly not fiction, (so maybe I shouldn’t be getting into it here) but I wonder just how much he might have added anyway. Either way it may be some exciting stuff… I don’t suppose anyone’s read any of this, have they?