Journey Lhasa by Neel Alexandra, First Edition (5 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No DJ. First Edition. 310pp. Stated First Edition. Full color pictorial boards. Map endpapers. 43 illustratioins. Lacks the frontispiece. The text block is clean, unmarked. Fraying to the Spine edges, Original spine label has a minor part missing. Overall a serviceable copy. "In 1923, a fifty-five-year-old Frenchwoman named Madame Alexandra David-Néel disguised herself as a male pilgrim and ascended to the ancient Tibetan city of Lhasa. David-Néel's recounting of her journey is one of the great travelogues of the twentieth century, filled with adventure and danger and set against the spectacular backdrop of one of the world's most remarkable cultures." Size: Octavo.

Hardcover. Condition: Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First Edition. Original gilt-titled cloth. First edition. Spine ends/points bumped and worn; shallow losses to spine ends; rubbing/scratching to boards; edges bumped; mild scattered foxing. All plates present. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; xviii,310 pages.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Hardback book (310 pages) illustrated with vintage b/w photographs (all present). Boards show scuffing/rubbing especially at edge with tips worn - inscription written on front free endpaper. Bookseller since 1995 (ULTV-TS-R) rareviewbooks.

First British edition, first impression, published simultaneously with the first US edition. 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). Robinson, p. 9. Alexandre Andreyev, The Myth of the Masters Revived: the Occult Lives of Nikolai and Elena Roerich, 2014. Octavo. Half-tone frontispiece of the author, 27 similar plates. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, vignette of Lhasa to front cover in gilt, publisher stamp in blind to back cover, bottom edge untrimmed, others trimmed. Dust jacket flap loosely inserted. August 1927 gift inscription, 1947 Christmas inscription and printed Freemason's poem on friendship affixed to front free endpaper. Cloth lightly soiled and stained, spine rolled, spine ends and tips bumped and worn, contents generally clean. A very good copy.

First edition, 8vo, pp. xviii, [2], 309, [1]; frontispiece portrait, 43 illustrations from photographs on rectos and versos of 15 plates; original pictorial black cloth stamped in gilt on upper cover and spine; bindings slightly spotted, else very good, sound and clean. 1927 ownership signature of Crompton Peatfield. "The author travelled to Lhasa from China in 1917, lived in Lhasa for two months disguised as a beggar in 1923-24, and returned to France in 1925. She became the first European woman entered into Lhasa, and lived on until 1969, dying at the age of 100" (Yakushi). Yakushi D86b.