Arabia Deserta

Charles M. Doughty's Victorian epic of Arabian exploration, reborn in a sumptuous illustrated edition. This 1989 Bloomsbury hardcover presents the New Illustrated Edition with an introduction by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who called Doughty's prose "a book not like other books, but something particular, a bible of its kind."

Originally published in 1888 after Doughty spent two years wandering Arabia in the 1870s, "Arabia Deserta" mingles travel narrative, ethnography, and deliberately archaic English into something wholly original. Doughty's quest was partly linguistic - he wanted to save English from Victorian blandness by reviving Elizabethan vocabulary and syntax, creating prose that sounds like a fever dream of the King James Bible.

Lawrence's introduction legitimizes Doughty's eccentric genius, explaining how this difficult, brilliant book influenced his own Arabian campaigns. Bloomsbury's illustrated edition makes accessible a text that helped shape Western imagination of Arabia - for better and worse - while showcasing Doughty's unmatched commitment to literary craft. Essential for students of travel literature, orientalism, or anyone fascinated by books that refuse to behave.