First edition. A true classic of travel literature, describing the 1879 expedition across the Nejd from Beirut, south into the Great Nefud, north to Baghdad and east to the Arabian Gulf, undertaken by Anne Blunt and her husband Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a prominent couple of British explorers. Conveying "an ideal of an Arab aristocracy of the desert" (Nash), the travelogue describes the Blunts interaction with sheikhs and emirs, but also their fascination with Arabian horses, including an account of the stables at Hail. Lady Blunt was, along with her husband, the founder of the Crabbet Arabian Stud, and the first European woman to journey to Central Arabia. Furthermore, the Blunts were the first Europeans to enter the Jebel Shammar in the Nejd "openly and at leisure", free to map and record geographical and physical features.
Apparently received as a gift from the author, with pencil inscription by the recipient on the flyleaf of volume I, an additional 1940 owner's inscription and a previous ownership erased. With a few annotations and reading notes from 1928.
Bindings a bit stained and slighty rubbed. Paper slightly foxed throughout; small tear to inner margin of the map (not touching image), small tear in the lower margin of the map repaired; tear to the contents page of vol. II repaired. Overall a good copy. Macro 555. Nash, Travellers to the Middle East 73. Howgego III, B49. Boyd/P. 16. NYPL Arabia Coll. 164. Henze I, 277.