Blunt, Lady Anne
Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates
Estimate: £200 - £300
Auction: 18 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
London: John Murray, 1879. First edition, 2 volumes in 1, 8vo, original red pictorial cloth with Bedouin figure on horseback stamped in gilt to front board, title in gilt to spine, all edges gilt, half-title, 12 wood-engraved plates, folding colour map of the Euphrates Valley, folding plate ('Pedigree of the Arabian Thoroughbred Stock'), frontispiece and title page, prize label dated 1884 to front pastedown
Footnote
Apparently a prize-issue, bound by the publisher into one volume for distribution as school prizes; the work is usually found encountered with the two volumes bound separately. Anne Isabella Noel Blunt (1837-1917) was the daughter of Ada Lovelace and granddaughter of Lord Byron. She had a lifelong passion for Arabian horses and travelled extensively in Arabia and the Middle East as a result of this. With her husband Wilfred Blunt she set up studs in England and Egypt. The legacy from the Blunts successful breeding lives on to this day in many modern Arabian horses.