Edward William Lane

Edward William Lane (1801–1876) was an English orientalist, translator and lexicographer. Born in Hereford and trained as an engraver, he went to Egypt in 1825 and spent much of the next two decades in Cairo, living among its people and learning Arabic thoroughly. An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) remains a primary source on the city's life. His annotated translation of The Thousand and One Nights followed, and he devoted his last thirty years to a vast Arabic-English Lexicon, still unfinished at his death and completed by his great-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole.