The Coast of Incense. Autobiography 1933–1939.

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [xvi], 286, [2]. Publisher's green cloth binding rather than buckram, lettered in gilt to spine; untrimmed bottom edges. Top edge stained green. [There was also a variant lemon-yellow cloth binding]. With title-vignette printed in olive-green, full-page sketch map of the Hadhramaut by H. W. Hawes printed on green card stock, 51 b/w illus. and wood-engraved tailpieces by Reynolds Stone. Frank Quilter designed d/w, price-clipped, else Fine.

Part III of the author's between-the-wars autobiographical quartet. Stark's travelling adventures in Egypt, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and Southern Arabia ["whose distant, severe and unimaginable beauty lives in my heart"], her journeys to the Valley of the Hadhramaut, the quest of Shabwa, and her almost fatal illness in Shibam. An intrepid traveller to Turkey and the Middle East at a time when few westerners ventured there, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.