LANE, Edward William [translation and commentary] and William HARVEY [illustrator]. The Thousand and One Nights, commonly called in England, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. A new Translation from the Arabic, with copious Notes.

with 'stimulating micro-essays of enduring value'

LANE, Edward William [translation and commentary] and William HARVEY [illustrator]. The Thousand and One Nights, commonly called in England, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. A new Translation from the Arabic, with copious Notes. London, Charles Knight, 1841 [volume II] 1840.

Three volumes in large 8vo. Contemporary blue half-calf over watered cloth boards by Sharpe & Kellet of Liverpool, spines decorated in gilt and with red moroccco-lettering pieces, marbled endpapers; pp. xxxii, 618; xii, 643; xii, 763, wood-engraved titles in pagination, copiously illustrated throughout with superb wood-engravings; light wear to extremities, preliminaries occasionally lightly spotted, a solid and attractive set.
First edition of volumes two and three, early reprint of the first volume. The first English version of the vast corpus of Arabian fairy and folk tales to be translated directly from the Arabic, immensely influencial on British imagination of life, myth and culture of the Arabic World. Lane had lived for years in Egypt, was a superior Arabist and deeply immersed in Arabic culture. Being a trained illustrator himself, Lane supervised the work of William Harvey (1796-1866) a favoured pupil of Bewick, the inventor of wood-engraving. Lane believed that the corpus 'presented "most admirable pictures of the manners and customs of the Arabs, and particularly of those of the Egyptians" (Lane, Modern Egyptians, 1.vi n.). It reigned as the leading English translation of the Nights for decades, and its copious notes are stimulating micro-essays of enduring value' (ODNB).

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