DOUGHTY, CHARLES MONTAGU. 'TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA'. CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1888

Two volumes, 8vo. Half-titles, plates and in-text illustrations, publisher's advertisements at end of vol. I, folding map in the rear pocket of vol. I; scattered foxing, one or two closed marginal tears, splits to folding map. Later quarter green morocco over green cloth covered boards, spine with raised bands in six compartments, second, third, and fourth gilt-lettered; corners bumped, some rubbing to cloth, original pictorially gilt dark green cloth bound into each volume. 

First edition. "'Travels in Arabia Desert'... is an unrivalled encyclopaedia of knowledge about all aspects of nineteenth-century and earlier Arabia... Sir Richard Francis Burton praised the book's scientific knowledge and its style... So reliable was the book's anthropology of the Bedouin peoples and its topography, that British intelligence mined it for information during the First and Second World wars. Doughty's contributions to all areas of Arabian knowledge continue to be praised by scholars. His principal geographical achievement was to confirm 'that the Wady er-Rummah system drains a large area, and definitely to the east', but his main contribution may well be the description of the land use, economy, and other features of the forty-odd settlements that he visited... His book is one of many sources that describe nineteenth-century Arabian history, but 'no single work paints an overall picture of nineteenth-century Arabian society that tells us more', according to historian Bayly Winder" (ODNB).