The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut.

Los Angeles, CA Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1983. Paperback First Edition Thus (1983), so stated. and First Printing indicated by a complete numerical sequence. First published in 1936. First Edition Thus (1983), so stated. and First Printing indicated by a complete numerical sequence. Very Good in Wraps: shows very mild wear to the extremities; a single crease to the backstrip; a former owner's gift inscription at the front endpaper; the binding is slightly cocked off square; else flawless; the binding remains secure; the text is clean. Free of any creases to the panels. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text itself. A handsome copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing mild wear and a couple of other imperfections. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (8.25 x 5.55 x 1 inches). xii, 328 pages. Bibliography. Appendix. Index. Eight pages of vintage duotone photographic illustrations. Maps precede the text. Language: English. Weight: 15 ounces. Cover photograph by Katrina Thomas. Black self-wrappers with Blue, red, and white titles and designs at the front panel and red and white titles at the backstrip. Trade Paperback. Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs Perowne, DBE (1893 – 1993) was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as several autobiographic works and essays. She was one of the first non-Arabians to travel through the southern Arabian deserts. By 1931 she had completed three dangerous treks into the wilderness of western Iran, parts of which no Westerner had ever visited, and had located the long-fabled Valleys of the Assassins (Hashshashins). She described these explorations in The Valleys of the Assassins (1934). In 1935 she travelled to the Hadhramaut, the hinterland of southern Arabia, where only a handful of Western explorers had previously ventured, never as far or as widely as she went. Stark's first extensive travels after the war were in Turkey, which were the basis of this book on Ionia (1954). The unearthly beauty in her writing and the rare sensitivity in her perceptions of people, events and geography are here to be savored: "As we rode back, and the valley lay shining before us with the mounds of its cemeteries or habitations perhaps plainly visible under the folds of the ground, the great age of the world seemed to be revealed with a sudden poignancy: here men had wandered for thousands of years, their origin and their end unknown. Their dead lie thicker than the living amid these hills."