Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 volumes (New and Definitive Edition, Second Impression)

A$350 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books · No longer available

DOUGHTY, Charles M. Travels in Arabia Deserta. With an Introduction by T.E. Lawrence. London: Jonathan Cape, 1943. 2 vols. Royal 8vo. Original publisher's brown buckram cloth, spines lettered in gilt. Vol. I: 674 pp., half-tone portrait frontispiece, 8 plates (2 folding), numerous text illustrations, large colour folding map at rear; Vol. II: 696 pp., large colour folding map at rear, appendices, index and glossary of Arabic words. Title pages printed in red and black throughout. Unclipped dust jackets. New and Definitive Edition, second impression (first published in this format 1936; first edition 1888). O'Brien A017. Travels in Arabia Deserta occupies a position in literature shared by many of the most beloved works: for decades beyond its publication, it sat largely unread until it was discovered and championed by someone with the reach to bring it to a broader audience. In this case, that person was T.E. Lawrence, who "rediscovered" the work and sent it crashing into public perception. Doughty spent nearly two years in the deserts of north-western and central Arabia between 1876 and 1878, travelling with Bedouin tribes at a time when the region was essentially closed to Western visitors, and the book that resulted from his journey is — as written by Lawrence in his introduction — a work without date that can never grow old. Its prose is one of the strangest and most compelling in the English language: an idiosyncratic amalgam of Chaucerian and Elizabethan diction, Arabic

• Binding: Hardcover

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