The following book is an extensive account of the first survey of Palestine's geography, as written by someone who was part of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF)—Claude Reignier Conder. The results of the survey published are as follows: First, a map in twenty-six sheets to the scale of one inch to the statute mile. Secondly, a reduced map engraved on copper to the scale of 660 yards to the inch. The one-inch sheets are each accompanied by a memoir containing all the information collected by the Survey Party. Section A gives a geographical and topographical account of the country included in the sheet. Section B is an archæological description of the ruined sites. Section C includes the ethnographical notes and the local traditions of the district.

Narratives of the modern history of Palestine/Israel often begin with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Britain's arrival in 1917. However, this work argues that the contest over Palestine has its roots deep in the 19th century, with Victorians who first cast the Holy Land as an area to be possessed by empire, then began to devise schemes for its settler colonization. The product of historical research among almost forgotten guidebooks, archives and newspaper clippings, this book presents a previously unwritten chapter of Britain's colonial desire, and reveals how indigenous Palestinians began to react against, or accommodate themselves to, the West's fascination with their ancestral land. From the travellers who tried to overturn Jerusalem's holiest sites, to an uprising sparked by a church bell and a missionary's tragic actions, to one Palestinian's eventful visit to the heart of the British Empire, Palestine in the Victorian Age reveals how the events of the nineteenth century have cast a long shadow over the politics of Palestine/Israel ever since.