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English edition
Mar
2010
760 pp.
Hardbound
15X23 cm
$39.95
LE 200.00
ISBN
978 977 416 287 9
For sale worldwide
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Edward William Lane, 1801–1876
The Life of the Pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist
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Jason Thompson
The first full-length biography of the eminent Victorian scholar
Few Western scholars of the Middle East have exerted such profound influence as Edward William Lane. Lane’s Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), which has never gone out of print, remains as a highly authoritative study of Middle Eastern society. His annotated translation of the Arabian Nights (1839–41) retains a devoted readership. Lane’s recently recovered and published Description of Egypt (2000) shows that he was a pioneering Egyptologist as well as orientalist. The capstone of his career, the definitive Arabic-English Lexicon (1863–93), is an indispensable reference tool.
Yet, despite his extraordinary influence, little was known about Lane and virtually nothing about how he did his work. Now, in the first full-length biography, Lane’s life and accomplishments are examined in full, including his crucial years of field work in Egypt, revealing the life of a great Victorian scholar and presenting a fascinating episode in east–west encounter, interaction, and representation.
Jason Thompson is the editor of Edward William Lane’s Description of Egypt (AUC Press, 2000) and An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (AUC Press, 2003), and the author of Sir Gardiner Wilkinson and His Circle and A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present (AUC Press, 2008).
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Reviews
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“A literary monument.”—DAVO-Nachrichten
“Compelling and colorful.”—Saudi Aramco World
“An exhaustive source of information on Lane, his life, and his scholarship . . . . The book engagingly captures both the flavor and facts of Lane’s rich life.”—Egyptian Archaeology
“Jason Thompson has eloquently and evocatively supplemented Lane’s own observations and conjured up the colors, noises, and smells of Muhammad ‘Ali’s Egypt.”—Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement
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