By Tigris and Euphrates.

London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd,, 1923. First edition, first impression, of Stevens's exhaustive monograph on Iraqi culture, religion, and archaeology. Her observational and descriptive talents are especially apparent in her travel books on the rites of minor religious and ethnic groups in the Levant; scarce in commerce. Ethel Stefana Stevens (1879-1972) was a cultural anthropologist who specialized in the Middle East and its cultures. In 1921, she accompanied her husband, Sir Edwin Drower, to Iraq where he was an adviser to the Justice Minister until 1946. During their stay, she became especially devoted to the Mandaeans, an ethnoreligious group, native to the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia. In 1931 she began to study their literature, history, and religion, rapidly achieving a reputation as the leading authority on that subject, and as a chief collector of Mandaean manuscripts. Stevens "did not restrict herself to the role of an 'official' wife. Some of her time she devoted to travel and to learning Arabic. As a woman she had access to the women's quarters which were normally denied to men. A remarkable outcome is her collection from the vernacular of many folk and fairy tales from Baghdad, Mosul, and surroundings" (ODNB). The author's "exploits as a journalist during the Iraqi civil war in the early 1920s were rather out of keeping with jealous preconceptions of the behaviour of the daughter of an Anglican cleric. Honoured by Uppsala and Oxford with doctorates but now largely forgotten, she is another woman of the Middle East who deserves renewed recognition" (Rich, p. 205). Octavo. With half-tone photographic frontispiece and 23 similar plates, illustrated recto and verso. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, double fillet panel in blind on the front cover. Spine slightly cocked and sunned, minor marks to boards, top edge dust toned, occasional foxing. A very good copy. Not in Robinson or Theakstone. Paul J. Rich (ed.). Iraq and Gertrude Bell's The Arab of Mesopotamia, 2008.