AUTOBIOGRAPHY: TRAVELLER'S PRELUDE; BEYOND EUPHRATES; THE COAST OF INCENSE; DUST IN THE LION'S PAW. Complete in Four Volumes.

First editions, first printings. Four volumes. Original green cloth with gilt titles to the spines and gilt signatures to the upper boards, in dustwrappers. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs. A near fine set, all bindings square and firm with slight rubbing at the extremities, Traveller's Prelude has a little faint spotting to the text block edges and prelims, otherwise all volumes' contents are clean and without stamps or inscriptions. Complete with the bright original dustwrappers, each a little rubbed, nicked and creased, volumes two and three with some tape repairs to the underside. None are price-clipped. Housed in a slipcase decorated with patterned paper. An attractive set.

Freya Stark's complete autobiography. Stark (1893-1993) was an English explorer and travel writer who undertook her first expedition in 1927 when, due to Lebanon and Syria being under a repressive French regime which did not allow travel in the region, she travelled in secret (moving only at night and through the countryside) by donkey through Lebanon. A few years later she became the first westerner to explore certain remote parts of the Iranian wilderness, and in 1934 travelled to the Hadhramaut. During World War II she was employed by the British Ministry of Information and was posted in Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine. Following the war she resumed her explorations, was made a Dame in 1972, and travelled widely all the way into old age; at the age of 89 she was filmed by the BBC riding into the Himalayas on a mule. She wrote of her travels prolifically from 1934 to 1988.