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The Arabian Desert in English Travel Writing Since 1950: A Barren Legacy? book cover

1st Edition

The Arabian Desert in English Travel Writing Since 1950 A Barren Legacy?

By Jenny Walker Copyright 2023
240 Pages
by Routledge

240 Pages
by Routledge

240 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Broadly this book is about the Arabian desert as the locus of exploration by a long tradition of British travellers that includes T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger; more specifically, it is about those who, since 1950, have followed in their literary footsteps. In analysing modern works covering a land greater than the sum of its geographical parts, the discussion identifies outmoded tropes... Read more

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Arabia, the Land of Legend

  • The margins of Western desert travel in Arabia

  • Locating Arabia

  • Arabia as a country of the mind

  • The Lawrence and Thesiger legacy

  • Mapping the chapters

Chapter 1. In Literary Footsteps: The Prevalence of "Second Journeys"

  • A tradition of intertextuality

  • Learning from the past – Blackmore in the footsteps of Lawrence

  • Writing about the present – Kirkby and Hayes in the footsteps of Thesiger

  • Opportunities for the future – Evans in the footsteps of Thomas

Chapter 2. Desert and Sown: The Narration of Progress and Modernity

  • Desert but not deserted – Asher’s modern Bedu

  • The desert mechanised – Toy’s travels by Land Rover

  • The desert politicised – Morris and a Sultan’s pageant

  • The desert urbanised – Raban and a camel-free account

  • The desert historicised – Mackintosh-Smith’s inverse archaeology

Chapter 3: Gendering the Desert: Women and Desert Narratives

  • Where are the women? Western women’s travels in Arabia

  • "Pay, pack and follow" – women as desert writers

  • The siren trope

  • The "veiled best-seller"

  • Desert as an inconstant space

Chapter 4. Wonderment and Wilderness: Desert Science Writing

  • Delighting in sand grouse

  • George and the neo-sublime

  • Walker and Pittaway in amateur pursuits

  • Winser in search of solutions

  • Staging the desert for Western audiences

Chapter 5: Desert as Shared Space

  • Post-tourism and the accelerated sublime

  • The modern secular pilgrimage

  • Democratisation of the desert experience

Conclusion: Barren Legacy?

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Jenny Walker is Consultant to the CEO of Oman’s national accreditation agency. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Member of the British Guild of Travel Writers, she has written for Lonely Planet for 20 years in 40 guidebooks, curated a book of Silk Road drawings, and coauthored, with husband Sam Owen, an off-road guide to Oman.

"An astute, wide-ranging analysis of the directions British travel writing on Arabia have taken since Thesiger and the 1950s. Jenny Walker combines practical knowledge of the Arabian desert with sensitive readings of how writing about it has been formed by postmodern trends and twenty-first century contexts. This book is more than an update it is an invaluable aid to our understanding of the desert writing genre."

Geoffrey Nash, author of, From Empire to Orient, Travellers to the Middle East　　

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