Charles Montagu Doughty (19 August 1843 – 20 January 1926) was aBritish poet, writer, explorer, adventurer and traveller, best known for his two-volume 1888 travel bookTravels in Arabia Deserta.
Son of Rev. Charles Montagu Doughty, ofTheberton Hall nearSaxmundham, Suffolk, and Frederica Beaumont Hotham, daughter of Rev. the Hon. Frederick Hotham, ofDennington,Suffolk (son of the judge and politicianBeaumont Hotham, 2nd Baron Hotham), Doughty was born at Theberton Hall and educated at private schools inLaleham andElstree[1] and at a school for theRoyal Navy,Portsmouth. He was a student atKing's College School,Wimbledon, and went up toGonville and Caius College, Cambridge, migrating toDowning College, Cambridge, from which he took a BA in 1866, then taking anMA from Caius in 1869.[2][3]
Doughty is best known for his 1888 travel bookTravels in Arabia Deserta, a work in two volumes that, although it had little immediate influence upon its publication, slowly became a kind of touchstone of ambitious travel writing, one valued as much for its language as for its content.T. E. Lawrence rediscovered the book and caused it to be republished in the 1920s, contributing an admiring introduction of his own. Since then, the book has gone in and out of print.[citation needed] The book is a vast recounting of Doughty's treks through the Arabian deserts, and his discoveries there. It is written in an extravagant and mannered style that has been compared to theKing James Bible, but whose mixture ofElizabethanisms andVictorianisms received some criticism.[4] Among authors who have praised the book are the British novelistHenry Green, whose essay on Doughty, "Apologia," is reprinted in his collectionSurviving. Green's novels arguably show some direct stylistic influence of Doughty's book, as noted byJohn Updike in his introduction to the collection of Green's novelsLoving; Living; Party Going.[5]
Doughty's epic poemThe Dawn in Britain was originally published in 1906 in six volumes. It provides a preparatory basis and ideal forLaura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson's project of establishing an access to what they argue is an inherent meaning of words in theirRational Meaning: a New Foundation for the Definition of Words and Supplementary Essays.[6] The Jacksons hail Doughty's work as being exemplary of this access to meaning through the linguistic understanding he demonstrates in his diction, in the care he takes with his choice of words, which prefers pre-Shakespearean English for reasons "fundamentally linguistic, rather than literary."[7] Whole sections of the Jacksons' book examine Doughty's linguistic care and thinking.
He was awarded the 1912Royal Geographical Society'sFounder's Medal for his travels and writings.[8]
Edward Said characterizes Doughty as significant to the development of late 19th-centuryOrientalist style. Placing him in a category of Orientalism alongsideT. E. Lawrence,Gertrude Bell,David George Hogarth,St John Philby,Mark Sykes, andSir Ronald Storrs, Said writes: "Each ... believed his vision of things Oriental was individual, self-created out of some intensely personal encounter with the Orient, Islam, or the Arabs; each expressed general contempt for official knowledge held about the East."[9]
In 1886, Doughty married Caroline Amelia, daughter ofGeneral Sir William Montagu Scott McMurdo.[10][11][12] They were parents ofDorothy Susan (1892–1962) and Frederica ("Freda") Gertrude Doughty (1895–1972), sculptors and potters.[13][14] Doughty was uncle of Lieutenant-ColonelCharles Doughty-Wylie,VC,CB,CMG and his younger brother, the Naval Rear AdmiralHenry Montagu Doughty,CB.
Doughty was cremated atGolders Green Crematorium on 25 January 1926 and his ashes placed in Bay 1 of the Cloisters (tablet 2610).[citation needed]
