AT LAST!
I've got a copy of a biography of Jan Potocki*, author of one of my favourite reads. He was much more than an author; soldier, politician, publisher, world traveller, pioneer (I'm informed) of the discipline of ethnology. I think that means something like historical anthropology. This fellow is one of my worthies.

Where to start?
Many years ago - early 1960s - I came across a book in the public library called "The Saragossa Manuscript" - good title. I took the book home and read it, a great yarn though unusually constructed. The story was old, written originally in French by a Polish nobleman. It was also incomplete, some of it had gone walkabout, creating a mystery about the whole project. There was some biographical information about the author in the introduction which whetted my appetite for more. But no more was forthcoming.
Fast forward to 1995. I'm reading a review in the Guardian by Salman Rushdie. "It's taken a long time for Jan Potocki's masterpiece ... to be published in English. Now at last it has been ..."
What? I read this book a generation ago, what are you havering about, Rushdie?
When I got hold of the book in question I found out what Rushdie meant. This was a translation of what was claimed to be the complete novel, "Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse". Strangely though the earlier version seemed to have been forgotten.
And here's another mystery. The translator of the earlier version was one Elizabeth Abbott, an American lady. I've tried to find out more about her without success. A reference to a translation of a work of Stendhal is all I've found, nothing biographical. My interest in her is based on the fact that I found her version to be superior to that of the later translator.
The introduction to Ian MacLean's translation makes no reference to the Abbott translation, published in the USA in 1958, or to Christine Donougher's "Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript" published in 1990.
The story of the publication of the original is complicated. It appears that the first part was in a Parisian publisher's possession in 1804, but not published. It did appear, however, in Saint Petersburg at that time. Parts one and two were published in Paris in 1813. Part three, completed before Potocki's suicide in 1815, was never published in France.
Plagiarised versions of some of the tales did appear in France later in the 19th century and were the subject of litigation. Still the whole of "Manuscrit ..." made no appearance.

In the 1950s the author Roger Caillois was putting together a collection of mystery stories and unearthed the story of the "Manuscrit ..." He went on a hunt for the completed work, without success. Finally he decided to publish parts one and two with an explanatory introduction. This was the version translated by Ms. Abbott.
Caillois' reintroduction of the work stimulated further reseach into the mystery of the "Manuscrit ..." and led to the discovery of a Polish translation of the whole work.
This was translated back into French and published in France in 1989. It is the version MacLean translated into English.
Job done!
Not so fast! By this time a whole school of Potocki studies had come into existence, and various libraries, Polish and Russian, private and public, were microscopically inspected for additional manuscript and printed version. This resulted in the discovery of two versions of "Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse", since published in French in one volume.

There is a wikipedia article on Jan Potocki, and one on the "Manuscript ..." There's even more here, but it's in French. Also, I forgot to mention a film, Polish.

*Pronounced PotOTSkee.