Lady Anne Blunt's biography comes at the end of a line of famous portraits including that of her grandfather, Lord Byron. She achieved more in her life than many of her Victorian contemporaries, and yet had until now remained in the shadows of history. and her husband began what became an epic of desert travel, in pursuit of the thoroughbred Arabian horse. Her sketches and diaries of her journeys were transformed into insightful books describing the people and experiences she encountered along the way.
Lady Anne Blunt (1837-1917), daughter of the Earl of Lovelace and granddaughter of Lord Byron, is known as an adventurous traveler to the Middle East and the most accomplished horsewoman and breeder of Arabian stock of her era. She was married to poet and diplomat Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922). When he inherited a family estate in Sussex in 1872, the couple was able to establish a stud at their Crabbet Park home. They then traveled in the Middle East to purchase Arabian horses from Bedouin tribesmen, which they transported back to England. In 1878 Lady Anne journeyed from Beirut, across northern Syria, and south through Mesopotamia to Baghdad. From there she traveled north along the Tigris River and west across the desert to the Mediterranean port of Alexandretta (present-day Iskenderun, Turkey). In 1879 she again set out from Beirut, but traveled south through the Emirate of Jabal Shammar, reached its capital of Ha'il, across the Arabian Peninsula, and continued to the port of Bushehr (present-day Iran). Shown here is the first edition of Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates. It is one of two books that Lady Anne wrote based on her travel diaries during these journeys (the other is A Pilgrimage to Nejd). Edited by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the book concludes with a few chapters that he wrote on "the Arabs and their horses." In 1882 the couple opened a second stud outside Cairo, which they called Shaykh 'Ubayd. The couple separated in 1906, and in 1913 Lady Anne left England and moved permanently to Shaykh 'Ubayd. She died in Cairo in 1917. She is credited with helping preserve the purebred Arabian horse and was known by her friends as the "noble lady of the horses."
Since its first publication in 1989, The Arab Horse has been recognized as the definitive work on the subject. This, the third edition, has been substantially revised and redesigned to bring the story of the Arab horse to a new generation of enthusiasts of the breed, and to coincide with the opening of the British Museum's exhibition on 'The Horse from Arabia to Royal Ascot' in May 2012. The first Arab stallion brought into Britain from the Desert of Arabia was Padischah, imported in the 1830s, whose pure-bred line still exists. Since the first edition of The Arab Horse - subtitled 'A Complete Record of the Arab Horses Imported into Britain from the Desert of Arabia from the 1830s' - more imports have been discovered. But, as the author admits, one must draw the line somewhere. This book provides a complete record of all the desert-bred horses imported into Britain after Padischah, from whom present-day pure-bred Arab horses descend, up to 1960. In his introductory chapter, Peter Upton provides a narrative history of the desert journeys of those early British enthusiasts who went in search of horses suitable for shipping back to Britain, most notably Major Roger Upton, Wilfrid Scawen and Lady Anne Blunt (founders of the famous Crabbet Stud in 1878), and the Honourable Miss Dillon. Thereafter, and often in the words of the original importers, the author gives detailed descriptions of the eighty-six horses who have lines existing to this day, as well as detailed tables of descent of mares and stallions, and sections on Bedouin horse breeders, the origins of the Arab horse, and the development of strains. Lavishly illustrated with sixty full-page color portraits of horses by the author, and color reproductions of famous paintings of Arab horses by the Old Masters, and with 160 black-and-white photographs, this revised, expanded and reformatted edition of The Arab Horse will delight and inform all those with an interest in this most beautiful breed.
Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 1840-1922, was one of England's true eccentrics: a wildly individual, larger-than-life personality who was as admired as he was disliked. A writer, poet, rebel, politician and explorer, his controversial life was in every sense a 'pilgrimage of passion'. He campaigned tirelessly for the independence of Egypt, India and Ireland (for which he was imprisoned) and, before marrying Byron's granddaughter, he travelled widely as a diplomat embarking on passionate love affairs and upsetting the Establishment - whether the British Empire or conventional morality. George Wyndham, Lord Curzon and Oscar Wilde were just some of the figures who attended Blunt's famous literary Crabbet Club and young Arabists like T.E. Lawrence and St John Philby regarded him as a prophet. During his lifetime, and for many years after, no anthology was complete without his poems. Based on Wilfrid Blunt's complete diaries and papers, Elizabeth Longford has produced a riveting biography of this most compelling man.
