There had been an explosion of egyptomania in England due to Belzoni's exhibition at the Egyptian Hall and the release of Vivant Denon's Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte in that country (1803).

Lane's health was also deteriorating while living in London and he felt that he needed to migrate to a warmer climate during the harsh winter months.

He remained in Egypt for two and a half years, mingling with the locals, dressed as a Turk (the ethnicity of the then-dominant Ottoman Empire), and taking notes of his experiences and observations.

In Old Cairo, he lived near Bab al-Hadid, and studied Arabic with Sheikh Muhammad 'Ayyad al-Tantawi (1810–1861), who was later invited to teach at Saint Petersburg, Russia.

[9] On this trip he visited Abydos, Dendera, Luxor, Kom Ombo, Philae, Abu Simbel and a number of other ancient sites.

[15] Lane also discussed the landscape and geography of Egypt, including its deserts, the Nile and how it was formed, Egyptian agriculture, and the climate.

[18] In a letter he wrote to his friend Harriet Martineau, Lane stated that he felt the need to put a lot of effort into staying away from Ancient Egypt; he added that in the previous eight years he could not read a book on the subject as it fascinated him so much that it drew his attention away from his work.

[19] Lane spent 32 days at the Giza pyramid complex, drawing, making sketches, and taking notes for his work.

[23] Since Lane had trouble publishing his Description of Egypt, at the suggestion of John Murray he expanded a chapter of the original project into a separate book.

[24] Lane visited Egypt again in 1833 in order to collect materials to expand and revise the work, after the Society had accepted the publication.

He was forced to rely on information passed on by Egyptian men, as he explains:Many husbands of the middle classes, and some of the higher orders, freely talk of the affairs of the ḥareem with one who professes to agree with them in their general moral sentiments, if they have not to converse through the medium of an interpreter.

The Englishwoman in Egypt contains large sections of Lane's own unpublished work, altered so that it appears to be from Poole's perspective (for example "my brother" being substituted for "I").

The encyclopedic annotations from the first edition were published posthumously and separately in 1883 by his great-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole, as Arabian Society in the Middle Ages.

"[30] Nights researcher and author Robert Irwin writes that Lane's "style tends towards the grandiose and mock-biblical... Word order is frequently and pointlessly inverted.

[32]From 1842 onwards, Lane devoted himself to the monumental Arabic-English Lexicon, although he found time to contribute several articles to the journal of Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft.

Lane's great-nephew Stanley Lane-Poole finished the work based on his incomplete notes and published it in the twenty years following his death.

[38] In 1854, an anonymous work entitled The Genesis of the Earth and of Man was published, edited by Lane's nephew Reginald Stuart Poole.

[40] In his writings, he describes Copts as "of a sullen temper, extremely avaricious, and abominable dissemblers; cringing or domineering according to circumstances.

In 1840, Lane married Nafeesah, a Greek-Egyptian woman who had originally been either presented to him or purchased by him as a slave when she was around eight years old, and whom he had undertaken to educate.