On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks.: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and Northern-Western China.

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,, 1933. A pioneer in a vast new field of research First edition, first impression, with the scarce jacket. On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks details the findings of Stein's first three Central Asian expeditions and research undertaken between 1900 and 1916. This is an especially fresh copy of a work produced in the handsome style common to Stein's monographs. The work originated as a series of lectures given at Harvard University in December 1929. "The First Expedition had proved Stein to be as brilliantly effective a fieldworker as the Rajatarangini showed him to be a scholarly Orientalist - a pioneer in a vast new field of research; the Second, extending his investigations to Tun-Huang and the Aksai Chin, made him a hero and brought him knighthood; the Third, extending his field of operations still further – into Mongolia on the east and Iran on the west – gave substance to his role as 'Archaeological Explorer'" (Mirsky, p. 461). Octavo. Original reddish-brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover with embossed gilt roundel after Stein's personal emblem, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. With dust jacket. Coloured frontispiece with captioned tissueguard, 15 similar plates, 78 half-tone photographic plates, 8 extensive folding panoramas, folding colour map. Two pages of publisher's advertisements at end. Two recent Japanese bookseller's tickets on front pastedown. Cloth a little rubbed but still bright, text and illustrations fresh: jacket price-clipped and lightly soiled, a few chips and closed tears: a near-fine copy in very good jacket. Howgego IV S65; Yakushi S338. Jeannette Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological Explorer, 1998.