My Journey to Lhasa.: The Personal Story of the only White Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City.

New York: Harper & Brothers,, 1927. I dreamed of wild hills, immense deserted steppes, and impassable landscapes of glaciers First US edition, first printing, published simultaneously with the first British edition, uncommon in the eye-catching jacket. The author's magnum opus, My Journey to Lhasa thrilled Western readers with the story of how David-Neel visited Lhasa in 1924 in disguise. The French-Belgian explorer Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) travelled extensively in India and Tibet during the first half of the 20th century to study Buddhism. Her interest in travel was nurtured from a young age, and while studying in Paris from 1889 to 1890 she immersed herself in Asian languages and joined several secret and spiritual societies. In 1917, she travelled to China and took up a three-year residence at the famous Kumbum monastery, where she spent her time translating Buddhist texts into English and French. After David-Néel's return to France, she secured her legacy as one of the greatest Western proponents of Buddhism. She settled with Aphur Yongden, her adopted Tibetan son, at Digne in Provence, where she built her house Samten-Dzong, or "fortress of meditation". She remained devoted to studying, writing, and taking lecture tours through Europe; even aged 100, she renewed her passport. Her unwavering devotion to Buddhism and her willingness to trace it to its source strengthened her reputation as one of the greatest female explorers of the 20th century. Tibetans accorded her the title of Jetsunma, connoting a reincarnated Tibetan saint. The 14th Dalai Lama famously said of her: "Alexandra David-Néel was an enthusiastic Buddhist and the first to introduce the real Tibet to the West". In her extensive output of more than 30 books and countless articles, My Journey to Lhasa was followed by With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet (1931) and Tibetan Journey (1936) - works that introduced Western audiences to many hitherto unknown aspects of Tibetan religious culture and cemented her reputation in Britain as one of the most exciting travel writers of her day. My Journey to Lhasa "quickly became a bestseller, given that Tibet still retained much of its mysterious aura for the Western public" (Andreyev, p. 187). Octavo. Original pictorial boards, dark blue cloth backstrip, paper label, top edge cut, others uncut. With pictorial dust jacket with similar design to boards. Half-tone portrait frontispiece of the author, 29 similar plates (largely illustrated recto and verso); 3 pp. advertisements at end. Slightly rubbed, corners bumped, top edge of front board sunned, internally clean; jacket unclipped, chipped at extremities, spine sunned, repaired with clear tape on verso, tear at rear flap fold: a very good copy in good jacket. Robinson, p. 9. Alexandre Andreyev, The Myth of the Masters Revived: the Occult Lives of Nikolai and Elena Roerich, 2014.