As my last project, I am eager to translate very old folktales books, published before 1900 AD - as many as possible. This project covers not only such old materials but some other rare books too. Among these rare books three of them come from Italy, one comes from Persia,  and a few come from India. Normally all of these are regarded as Medieval folktale literature. Here are those books

Decamerone (1353)
This book has been written by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in Italian and is the collection of folktales from Italy published in 1353. Deca means 10. This is collection of 100 tales - 10 tales told daily for 10 days. It was published in Venice in 1492.

This book is structured as a frame story, containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltered in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived its idea after the epidemic of 1348 and completed it by 1353. Its folktales cover many subjects, for example, love, erotic, tragic, wit, practical jokes and life lessons. In addition to its literary value and widespread influences, for example on Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", it provides a document of life at the time. It was very popular among contemporaries, especially merchants. Its many manuscripts survive.

It was written in vernacular of Florentine language and is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose.

It has been translated into
--German (by Felix Liebrecht/ 1846),
--English (by John Edward Taylor/ 1847; Norman N Penzer/ 1934; Nancy L Canepa/ 2007)
--Italian (by Benedetto Croce/ 1925)

Wikipedia gives the list of its English translations published in 1620, 1702, 1741, 1855, 1886, 1896, 1903, 1930a, 1930b, 1972, 1977 and 2013. No Hindi translation of this book is available yet.

Facetious Nights of Straparola (1550)
This is the first book properly published in the world of folktales. It was written by Straparola,  an Italian, and published in Italian language in 1550.   It was published 20 times within 20 years of its first publishing, 1550-1570. There is no Hindi translation of this book available in the world. So read its first Hindi translation of this oldest, rare book of Italian folktales. This book was the first European book of fairy tales, of two volumes containing 75 tales. It would influence later fairy-tale authors like Charles Perrault and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

The 74 original tales are told over 13 nights, five tales are told each night except the eighth night (six tales) and the thirteenth night (13 tales). All tales have been told by women with the exception of the 2nd tale of the 2nd night (Filenio Sisterno by Mr Molino). No Hindi translation of this book is available yet.

Pentamerone (1634)
This book is another one of the oldest fairy tales book published in the 17th century. Its title is "Il Pentamerone" and it was written by Giambattista Basile, but was published posthumously by his sister under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis in two volumes in 1634 and 1636.

Its special feature is that while other collections have included that would be termed fairy tales, but this work is the first collection in which all the stories fit in that category. He did not transcribe them from the oral tradition, instead wrote them in Neapolitan language and in many respects was the first writer to preserve oral intonations.

It is structured around a frame story in which 50 stories are related over the course of five days by 10 deformed women, in analogy with the 10-day structure of the much earlier book "Decamerone" (Deca means 10 and Penta means 5).

Its one English translation by John Payne is available on Internet. It was originally published in a private printing for the Villon Society , London in 1886. Its American edition (NY : Walter J Black) is undated. No Hindi translation of this book is available yet.

Solomon and Marcolf
In 1521 a book was published titled as "The talks that the King Salomon the clever had with Marcolf" in Polish. The earliest known version of this tale in Old English is the one commonly referred to as "Solomon and Saturnus", first published by JN Kemble in 1848. The tale was popular in Germany where Marcolf became a sort of type of the "wise fool". Its French version was printed in 13th century. It was adapted in several other languages too - Dutch, Greek, Icelandic etc languages. There are two editions in English, one published by Gerard Leeu (1492), and other published  as "Sayings or Proverbs of King Solomon, with the Answers of Marcolfus" printed by Richard Pynson in 1550.

Solomon and Saturn is the generic name given to four Old English works - two poetic and two prose dialogs. which present a dialog of riddles between the King of Israel Solomon and Saturn identified in both the poems tradition as a Prince of the Chaldeans. The debate of which there are two poetic dialogs known as "Solomon and Saturn I" and "Solomon and Saturn II"  are older than the two prose ones but are often read as a single continuous poem. They are considered some of the most notoriously difficult poems of the Old English Corpus to date.

Although no exact evidence about their origin exists, but it has been argued that the Old English Solomon dialogs might date back to the times of King Alfred (871-886 AD). He is the only English King to have earned the title of "Great", while some say it fits into the mid 10th century. Both poetic dialogs present Saturn a Chaldean Prince who had searched the lore of Libya, Greece and India, questioning King Solomon about a range of apparently unrelated and chaotically arranged topics. Solomon and Saturn texts are often considered the earliest forms of a wider European literary tradition that comprises similar works such as the Dialog Between Solomon and Marcolf (2012). It has been translated from Latin to Medieval English. The same text is available with the title at "The Dialogue or Communing Between the Wise King Solomon and Marcolphus", edited by E Gordon Duff (1892).

"Solomon and Saturn II" is even more of a colloquy than the first one and that is why it has proven notoriously difficult to interpret. The dialog here is initiated by Saturn and there appears no sense of unifying there as was in the case of "Solomon and Saturn I".

This book has been published for the first time in Hindi as "Raja Solomon" by Prabhat Prakashan in 2019.