Description

W.E. Rudge/ The Studio Limited, 1932. Paper covers, 120 pp. No other printings listed. In acceptable+ condition. Yellow illustrated paper covers have nicking and tearing to the top and bottom of spine and light bumping and creasing to edges and corners. Light overall scuffing and soiling to covers as well. Spine is creased but binding is still intact. Pages are lightly aged but otherwise clean and unmarked. NOT Ex-library. Black and white photography throughout. A photography and travel book that explores the ancient civilizations of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. The photographer, C. G. Holme, known for his work with The Studio, a British art magazine, and William Gaunt, an well-known art historian and critic, combined their expertise to create a work that appealed to both art enthusiasts and history lovers. [From Introduction] Most books which show the countries of the world in photographs are not travel books because they do not indicate any route which the tourist may follow. On the other hand, most travel books are mainly composed of description, accompanied by comparatively few pictures. This is, we think, a new departure, inasmuch as it is a pictorial travel book giving in photographs, and in order of visit, the main things which the tourist sees on a journey round the Eastern Mediterranean. We embark at Genoa, go by boat along the coast of Italy, call at Sicily, pass through the Corinth Canal, and break our journey at Athens. We re-embark at Athens and go by boat to Istambul, whence we return through the Dardanelles, along the coast of Asia Minor, pay a visit to the Island of Rhodes, make excursions into Syria, and from Haifa go inland to Jerusalem by train. From Jerusalem we go by the desert railway across the Suez Canal to Cairo, and then along the Nile to Assouan in Upper Egypt by train, then to Alexandria, whence we return on the same boat on which we started out. In this journey there is nothing arduous or complicated. The traveller who wishes to see the remains of ancient civilisation in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt can follow our footsteps in perfect comfort. With this book he can "check up" on our reactions to each place. It is our hope that it may assist travellers by projecting their route in photographs, and help them to define their own impressions at each stage by reference to our own. The text amplifies such incidents, sounds, colours and elements of beauty, picturesqueness or interest as are to be met with in the places shown by the photographs, and, for convenience, a few historical notes are added (which, however, do not pretend to be anything more than a guide book would provide). For this is a book of impressions. It is in no sense a learned or exhaustive book, and deals not only with the ancient world as it was, but also the Levant as it is, and as the tourist sees it. We tried to show what this small part of the world, that was once the whole world, actually looks like to-day.