Wild Flowers of Bahrain and Kuwait.

the copy of the dust-jacket illustrator

The copy of the dust-jacket illustrator of this scarce work on Kuwait and Bahrain. Valentine Hugh Wilfred Dowson (d.1980) served in the Mesopotamia Campaign in WW1 and stayed as an intelligence agent/date dealer, living in Basra with Margaret Joy Dowson. As part of the British political scene in the Gulf they would certainly have known the Dicksons and Margaret Joy would have been the ideal person to ask for an illustration of a date-palm with appears on the front cover. Someone has clearly taken the trouble to preserve the dust-jacket but cutting and pasting the salient portions to the first pages inside.

Violet Dickson spent twenty-eight years in Arabia, along with her husband, Lt.-Col. Dickson. This afforded her the opportunity to gather botanical specimens for Kew, as well as mammal specimens for the British Museum and Smithsonian Institute. The standard work on the subject. Scarce.

First edition; 8vo (22 x 14.5 cm); ownership stamps to endpapers, dust-jacket cover and blurb pasted to free endpaper and half-title with manuscript captions, errata slip; publisher's original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, a touch of rubbing, a very good copy; 144 pp.