LANE, Edward William. 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, 1840-41. Three volumes. Royal octavo, late 19th-century three-quarter brown morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt. Early mixed edition of Lane’s important translation of The Arabian Nights, illustrated with more than 500 intricate wood engravings from original designs by William Harvey, handsomely bound by G. Cross (binder to the Queen). Believing the Egyptian customs and manners of his own day to have remained “more or less unchanged since the Middle Ages,” Lane intended his translation of the Arabian Nights (also an expurgation and condensation of it, designed for “family reading”) to be “an instructional work;” it thus includes abundant notes on “cloves, graveyards, gypsum, chess, hippopotami, laws of inheritance, perspiration, polygamy, rubbish tips and much, much more… Lane’s translation was enthusiastically received” (Irwin, 24-25). The Dictionary of National Biography praised it as “the first accurate version of the celebrated Arabic stories… The eastern tone, which was lost in the earlier versions… is faithfully reproduced.” Illustrator William Harvey was “Thomas Bewick’s most successful apprentice… [and became] the leading designer for wood-engraved book illustrations in the 1830s and 1840s” (Hodnett, 126). For Thousand and One Nights, Harvey kept as many as 40 engravers busy, producing over 500 amazingly intricate blocks. “He collaborated very closely with Lane in preparing his drawings and drew heavily on his collection of Oriental costumes” (Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books, 31). Additional wood-engraved title pages. All 3 volumes are first editions.