British explorer and writer, born in 1843, the youngest son of the Rev. C. M. Doughty of Theberton Hall, Suffolk. In 1875 he made an adventurous journey through northern Arabia, remaining nearly two years in the country, and, after many hazards and hardships, finally emerging at Jidda. He published the results of his observations in a work since recognized as a classic worthy to rank with the records of the Elizabethan voyagers. Travels in Arabia Deserta, issued by the Cambridge University Press in 1888, received at first little recognition and brought its author no material reward. But gradually its fame spread amongst travellers and lovers of literature until the rare copies of the first edition were scarcely procurable at any price, and in 1921 a facsimile reprint of the two volumes was issued at £9 9s. The value of Doughty’s work as a traveller had by that time secured universal recognition; nothing was left for any future explorer to study between Damascus and Mecca which Doughty had not already closely studied, and in 1912 the Royal Geographical Society bestowed on him its Founder’s gold medal. He had done other work previously, and he published several volumes; but he remains, in the estimation of the literary world, the author of one book. It should, however, be noted that in 1866 he brought out On the Jōstedal-Brae Glaciers in Norway, and a collection of inscriptions copied by him in Arabia was published by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1884. His later years were devoted to poetry and poetic drama. In 1906 he published an epic in six volumes The Dawn in Britain, followed by Adam Cast Forth (1908), The Cliffs (1909), The Clouds (1912), The Titans (1916) and Mansoul, or the Riddle of the World (1920).
