Arabian Adventure - Douglas Carruthers’s Oryx Expedition, Inscribed by the Author

CARRUTHERS, Douglas. Arabian Adventure: To the Great Nafud in Quest of the Oryx. London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1935.

First edition, first impression. Original rust cloth, lettered in white to spine. With thirty-three photographic plates and two maps, including the folding map of the Shararāt Wilderness and Western Nafud.

Inscribed by the author on the half-title:

Rosemary Portal
from
the author
Douglas Carruthers
Christmas 1936

A distinguished presentation copy of Carruthers’s account of Arabian exploration, from the collection of Rosemary Portal, daughter of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford.

Carruthers was one of the great British traveller-naturalists of the early twentieth century, combining field exploration, zoology and geography. Here he records his journey into the Great Nafud in pursuit of the Arabian oryx, but the book is far more than a sporting or natural history narrative. It is also a study of desert travel, Bedouin life, the geography of northern Arabia and the mapping of one of the most difficult regions then known to British explorers.

The T. E. Lawrence connection is particularly strong. In the preface Carruthers thanks “Col. T. E. Lawrence” for his co-operation over many years in answering geographical questions, specifically to improve the poor maps of the Shararāt Wilderness. He also adds a postscript recording Lawrence’s death before publication and noting that quotations from Lawrence’s writings and letters were used with the permission of his executors.

A handsome and evocative copy, linking Arabian exploration, Lawrence’s desert geography and the Portal family. Some light spotting and minor signs of age internally, but a very attractive example of a scarce and highly collectable Arabian travel work.