This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/26/2022
LANE, Edward William (1801–1876), translator. Tales of a Thousand and One Nights; [or], The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. London: Whitehead and Co. for Charles Knight & Co., 1838–1841. 32 parts in 33, royal 8vo (254 x 165 mm). Numerous woodcut vignettes by various English artists after original designs by William Harvey. Original publisher’s printed blue–green pictorial wrappers (few covers with occasional browning or tiny stains, else fine); cloth chemise; morocco–backed slipcases. Provenance: purchased from Sotheby’s January 1892 by Thomas Wilson esquire, then sold to George Seymour Snowden (ALS from Snowden to Wilson dated 21 January 1892); S. Low (early bookseller’s ticket on upper cover of Part VI). FIRST LANE TRANSLATION IN ORIGINAL MONTHLY PARTS. Includes the Part X supplement that is seen lacking in the only other known set that is in the Gordon N. Ray collection held at the Pierpont Morgan Library which OCLC locates as being the only copy held institutionally. The last set issued in parts that we could locate at auction sold in 1920 at Anderson Galleries. A WELL–PRESERVED SET THAT IS EXCEEDINGLY RARE IN ORIGINAL PARTS. Considered to be the standard and comprehensive English translation of this work, but often expurgating at times, Lane’s annotations provide numerous ethnographic notes on Arab customs that were considered lacking in the original French translation by Galland. “The version which has so long amused us, not made immediately from the original Arabic, but through the medium of a French translation, is extremely loose, and abounds with such errors as greatly detract from the most valuable quality of the work, which is that of presenting a series of most faithful and minutely detailed pictures of the manners and customs of the Arabs” (Translator’s note to reader in Part I).