TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA, With an Introduction by T. E. Lawrence

2 volumes. First edition, second issue of the 1936 "New and Definitive Edition" with the introduction by T. E. Lawrence and the prefaces to the first through third editions. Portrait frontispiece in first volume, maps, plans, and collotype plates including large fold-out maps at the inside of the rear covers of both volumes. Royal 8vo, original brown cloth with gilt lettered spines. 674; 696. A very handsome set, clean and fresh, just a little minor rubbing to the bottom board edges.

Edizione: arabia deserta is perhaps one of the best-known classics of exploration and travel. few writers of any genre have worked such magic or mischief on the english language as doughty. he disapproved of victorian style, and mingled his own with chaucerian and elizabethan english and arabic.<br> but whatever the style, the result is perhaps the finest book on arabia ever written. we will let another arabist, lawrence, speak on doughty's behalf: "i have talked the book over with many travellers, and we are agreed that here you have all the desert, its hills and plains, the lava fields, the villages, the tents, the men and animals. they are told of to the life, with words and phrases fitted to them so perfectly that one cannot dissociate them in memory. it is the true arabia, the land with its smells and dirt, as well as its nobility and freedom. there is no sentiment, nothing merely picturesque, that most common failing of oriental travel-books. doughty's completeness is devastating. there is nothing we would take away, little we could add. he took all arabia for his province, and has left to his successors only the poor part of specialists. we may write books on parts of the desert or some of the history of it; but there can never be another picture of the whole, in our time, because here it is all said." (- from the introduction).