£150
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. 192 + 4 double-sided plates. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, dustjacket printed in blue and black. Edges a bit foxed. A couple of bumps to edges, dustjacket price-clipped, lightly soiled overall, faint ring-stain to front panel, extremities rubbed and a touch worn, a few creases to extremities.
The first edition of Christie's account of archaeological expeditions undertaken with her husband Max Mallowan in the 1930s in Syria, written during the Second World War when Max was posted to Egypt and Christie lived alone in London. First published in November 1946, it was not reprinted until thirty years later, and the photographs accompanying the text (here printed four to a plate in a postwar economy measure) were changed for that and all subsequent editions. The dustjacket seems to be particularly fragile and is hard now to find in one piece.
