DROWER (E. S.).

Peacock Angel: Being some Account of Votaries of a Secret Cult and their Sanctuaries.

WITH THE YAZIDIS IN IRAQI KURDISTAN

First edition. Numerous photographic illustrations. 8vo. Original red cloth, lettered on upper cover and spine in black, very light wear to extremities, otherwise near fine; in a near very good, slightly sunned and chipped (head and foot of backstrip) dust-jacket. Interior pages clean and fresh. pp. viii, [2], 214. London, John Murray, 1941.

£450.00

The author wrote a number of books on the peoples and cultures of Iraq, as E.S. Stevens and then E.S. Drower. In Peacock Angel, she recounts her ‘stay of a spring month’ in the Yazidi village of Baashika.

In the ‘prelude’ she downplays the value of her work, deeming it ‘not a serious contribution to the literature about the sect’. However, her ‘personal impression of day-by-day happenings and friendships’ provides a sensitive and illuminating view of an oft mis-represented and persecuted religious group. One learns much about the festivals, shrines and customs (birth, marriage etc) of the Yazidis.

A recurring feature of the text is the peace Drower experiences, which she contrasts with the anxious atmosphere of British life at the beginning of the Second World War.

Provenance: Bookplate of Archibald B. Roosevelt Jr. (1918-1990) to front pastedown.

Stock No.
255405