Alexander Lindsay
Alexander William Crawford Lindsay (1812–1880), later
25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres, was a
Scottish peer, art historian, collector, and genealogist.
Born at Muncaster Castle in Cumbria, the eldest son of
James Lindsay, 24th Earl of Crawford, he was educated at
Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge and spent much of
his life travelling, studying art, and building up the
Bibliotheca Lindesiana, one of the great private libraries
of nineteenth-century Britain.
During his 1837–1838 journey through Egypt, Sinai, Petra, Palestine, and
Syria, he composed the material that became his two-volume
Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land (1838–39). Although
presented as real letters written on the road, the published
version was edited and refined, with some portions drawn from
the journal of his travelling companion George Ramsay.