Arabie

1928 · 33452 — Oxford: Oxford University Press. London: Humphrey Milford 1928. First edition. With a frontispiece portrait from the Simson bronze medallion nine plates of portraits sketches letters etc. and a fold-out map. 4to in the publisher's original green cloth lettered in gilt on the spine in the rare printed dustjacket. viii 4 216 pp. A very pleasing copy of this elusive work the text quite fine the cloth also in excellent condition with virtually none of the usual fading the rare dustjacket complete and with only minor rubbing to the extremities. An unusually fine survival. A SCARCE WORK OF INTEREST TO BOTH DOUGHTY AND T. E. LAWRENCE COLLECTORS. The author David G. Hogarth who died before the book came to publication was the noted archaeologist and scholar associated with both Lawrence and Doughty. He led the Carchemish archeological work in Syria where he employed Lawrence and was also professionally associated with Sir Mark Sykes. Professor Hogarth was appointed the acting director of the Arab Bureau for a time during 1916 when Sir Sykes went back to London. Close with T. E. Lawrence he worked with Lawrence to plan the great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks and Germans. Hogarth introduced Lawrence to Doughty and Lawrence wrote the famous introduction to the 1921 edition of Doughty's TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA.<br> T.E. Lawrence in his introduction to the 1921 edition describes this 'not like other books.a bible of its kind'. In referring to Doughty's own impressions of his effort Lawrence states: 'He calls his book the seeing of a hungry man the telling of a most weary man."<br> ARABIA DESERTA is 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 prose 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. Another Arabist T.E. Lawrence speaks on Doughty: "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 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.<br> Hogarth's son William made the final revisions needed to his father's long-compiled manuscripts after the elder Hogarth passed in 1927. With the help of Mrs. Doughty Edward Garnett and Sydney Cockerell he was finally able to finish his father's labor of love and bring the work to publication. Oxford University Press. London: Humphrey Milford hardcover