Jen Turner, Administrator, writes: On 25 March 2023 the Griffith Institute acquired at auction Lane’s album of watercolours and images thanks to a generous grant of the Friends of the National Libraries (75%) and a number of donations to the Griffith Institute Archive (25%).
Edward William Lane (1801–1876) was a British scholar born in Hereford on 17 September 1801, the son of Theophilus Lane, a military officer and prebendary of Hereford Cathedral, and Sophia Gardiner. After being educated at the Grammar Schools of Bath and Hereford, he joined his brother in London as an engraver, but abandoned that career owing to ill health. He learned Arabic and went to Egypt between 19 September 1825 and 7 April 1828. Based Cairo and made voyages up the Nile, and from 15 March to 28 October 1826, where he went as far as the Second Cataract, and again from 23 June to 19 December 1827 with Robert Hay (1799–1863), up to Abu Simbel. Lane returned to Egypt from 13 December 1833 to 29 August 1835 and shortly afterwards in 1836 published Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. He was again in Egypt from 19 July 1842 to 16 October 1849 compiling his great Arabic dictionary, An Arabic-English Lexicon, funded by Algernon Percy, the Duke of Northumberland. It appeared in parts from 1863–1893. Lane was the leading Arabic scholar of Europe, and although his works are primarily concerned with the modern Egyptians they are of great value to Egyptologists as he was closely associated with Hay and Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797–1875).
This presentation album comprises material created during the periods Lane lived in Egypt between the mid-1820s and the late 1840s. In includes 23 fine original studies comprise the photographic portrait of a sculptural bust of Lane, two fully worked drawings with watercolour, 11 monochrome watercolours with pen and ink landscapes and views of the pyramids, the Great Sphinx of Giza and other colossal sculptures, and ten pencil studies of wall reliefs. Many of these images include handwritten captions in pencil on the opposing page of the mounted image. The album also includes an image of a bust of Lane now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Inside the album are handwritten notes from the former owner Mrs May Charlotte Buckton.
Lane was already prominently featured in the Griffith Institute Archive: the collection includes 22 diaries and journals from his first and second trips to Egypt, 11 additional notebooks, six packets of camera lucida cards, six notebooks for Modern Egypt and 93 items of personal correspondence. Most of these documents were donated to the Griffith Institute in 1942 and 1947 by Mrs Charles Larcom and Austin Lane Poole, the children Lane’s great-nephew Reginald Lane Poole (1857–1939).
The album reached the Griffith Institute on 27 April 2023 and was immediately assessed and subsequently digitised in the summer of 2023. This album has been placed in the Griffith Institute Archive alongside the collection of notebooks, drawings and manuscripts of Edward Lane. This acquisition has prompted the archive team to complete conservation, full digitisation and cataloguing for the entire Lane collection, which is currently being worked on to make it fully accessible online for early 2024.
The Griffith Institute staff would like to express their immense gratitude to FNL for once again making possible the acquisition of a precious document for the Archive that contributes to the Edward William Lane collection of archival material held by the Griffith Institute.
