Vanished Kingdoms; A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China & Mongolia 1921-1925

New York: Aperture (in association with The Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University), 2003. First Edition [Stated], Third Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. The format is approximately 11.625 inches by 9.875 inches. 190, [2] pages. Illustrations (some in color). Taken out of shrinkwrap for cataloguing. Small tear at bottom of DJ at spine. Minor edge wear through the shrinkwrap noted. Preface by Dr. Rubie Watson. Mabel "Muffie" Wentworth Brandon Cabot (née Bryant Hobart; born c. 1936) is an American heiress and socialite. During the 1980s she served as social secretary to Nancy Reagan. A member of an American family descended from passengers on the Mayflower, Cabot grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduated from Smith College. Her mother, Janet Elliott Wulsin, was a former explorer who undertook several National Geographic Society-financed expeditions to Tibet and Outer Mongolia. In 2003, the Aperture Foundation published Muffie Cabot's Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia, 1921-1925, an account of her mother's travels in early 20th-century Asia. Her early work on the book was encouraged by long-time friend Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who read a first draft prior to her death. Janet Elliott Wulsin (October 17, 1893 - November 15, 1963) was an American early 20th-century explorer, whose accomplishments place her in line with contemporary women explorers such as Alexandra David-Neel. Anxious to explore, Janet in 1918, at age 24, she joined the Red Cross as a nurse in France to help out the war effort and to be near her fiancé, Frederick Roelker Wulsin, whom she married in 1919. Inspired by the travels of Roy Chapman Andrews, the Wulsins resolved to dedicate themselves to a life of travel the world. From 1921 to 1925, the couple mounted expeditions to the far reaches of China, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia to study the people, flora, and fauna of the region. With a grant from the National Geographic Society, the Wulsin's undertook the National Geographic Society Central China Expedition. They took 28 camels, six horses, four Mongolian camel drivers and 10 Chinese "specimen collectors." Together, the Wulsins collected 1,400 botanical and zoological specimens and documented Buddhist rituals. They also took hundreds of photographs, documented tribespeople and desert landscapes. In the early 1920s, the last great age of world explorers, a remarkable young woman named Janet Elliott Wulsin, set out with her husband, Frederick Wulsin, for the far reaches of China, Tibet and Outer Mongolia to study the people, flora and fauna of the region. Wulsin's strenuous, eventful exploration is detailed by a text enriched with excerpts from her candid personal letters. The journey proved to be a test of the Wulsins' endurance and of their relationship. While in Asia, the Wulsins took many extraordinary photographs, which form the heart of this richly-produced publication. They documented tribes people and sublime desert landscapes, and, most remarkably, were allowed to photograph the interior of several of the great Tibetan Buddhist lamaseries, including Choni, Kumbum and Labrang, one of few early Westerners allowed to do so . Several dozen rare, hand-painted lantern slides survived and are reproduced here in splendid color. The photographs from the Wulsin Expedition, now in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, in collaboration with whom this volume is being produced, are a testament to the great spirit and success of a remarkable woman explorer. [the] pictures are thrilling and romantic: Janet in various native costumes, the insides of temples never before photographed... (sun-glasses, boots, rustic camps, also make this a costume designer's fantasy of a book). --Los Angeles Times. Janet Wulsin covered thousands of miles in remote China on foot, mule, camel and raft, developing and cataloguing astonishingly beautiful, otherworldly photographs... Wulsin's diaries and letters are as illustrative and vivid as the photos themselves. --Washington Post.