Edward William Lane (1801-76), a name known to almost everyone in all the many fields of Middle East studies, was the author of a number of highly influential works: An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), his translation of The Thousand and One Nights (1839-41), Selections from the Kur-an (1843), and the Arabic-English Lexicon (1863-93). In 2000, his long-forgotten manuscript Description of Egypt was published for the first time by the AUC Press.

Jason Thompson is currently a visiting professor at Bates College. He is the editor of Lane's Description of Egypt (AUC Press, 2000) and the author of A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present ( AUC Press, 2008) and Edward William Lane, 1801-76 ( AUC Press, 2010).