‘Travellers to the Middle East from Burkhardt to Thesiger’ is a compendious anthology of travellers’ writings produced during the high tide of Britain’s involvement in the Middle East. The anthology contains extracts from many of the canonical travel texts of the period, including passages by T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Robert Byron, as well as many more extracts from both female and male writers. The anthology is also enlivened by the broad geographical span covered, including descriptions of territories in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Arabia and Persia.

Geoffrey Nash’s introduction, notes and background material provide specialist historical analysis and biographical information informed by critical and theoretical perspectives relevant to the genre of travel writing. This anthology will satisfy the growing interest in the study of travel writing, in addition to offering the general reader valuable insights into British perceptions of the Middle East.

Geoffrey P. Nash is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sunderland. His research interests include Arab writing in English, and travel writing on the Middle East.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; David Urquhart: Spirit of the East; Alexander Kinglake: Eothen; Eliot Warburton: The Crescent and the Rose; Harriet Martineau: Eastern Life, Present and Past; Robert Curzon: Visits to Monasteries of the Levant; Lucie Duff Gordon: Letters from Egypt; John Lewis Burckhardt: Travels in Arabia; J. R.Wellsted: Travels in Arabia; Richard Burton: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah; W.G. Palgrave: Narrative of a Year’s Journey to Central and Eastern Arabia; Lady Anne Blunt: A Pilgrimage to Nejd; Charles Doughty: Travels in Arabia Deserta; James Morier: A Journey through Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor; John Malcolm: Sketches of Persia; James Baillie Fraser: Travels in the Persian Provinces of the Caspian; Lady Sheil: Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia; Arminius Vambery: Travels in Central Asia; Austen Henry Layard: Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia; D. G. Hogarth: A Wandering Scholar in the Levant; Mark Sykes: Dar-ul-Islam; Charles Roden Buxton: Turkey in Revolution; Grace Ellison: An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem; C. S. Jarvis: Three Deserts; Thomas Hodgkin: Letters from Palestine, 1932-1936; Percy Cox: Some Excursions in Oman; T. E. Lawrence: Revolt in the Desert; Ameen Rihani: Ibn Sa’oud: His People and His Land; Freya Stark: The Southern Gates of Arabia; Bertram Thomas: Arabia Felix; Wilfred Thesiger: Arabian Sands; George Nathaniel Curzon: Persia and the Persian Question; E.G. Browne: A Year Amongst the Persians; Gertrude Bell: Persian Letters; Valentine Chirol: The Middle East Question; Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana; Ella Maillart: The Cruel Way