The European myth of the harem fantasy intensified in the nineteenth century with the ready availability of the book "Arabian Nights" (also known as "Thousand and One Nights"). Antoine Galland first translated it into French in 1717. The enormously popular book of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries painted a picture of a timeless fantasy world of exotic adventure. The influence of this tale on travelling artist's first hand absorption and interpretation of visual information is discussed in Mary Roberts's book "Intimate Outsiders".