An English Lady in Chinese Turkestan

London: Ernest Benn. Very Good+ with no dust jacket. (1931). First Edition. Hardcover. A nice copy of this title. Some foxing to top page edges. Tidy previous owner's inscription dated "Xmas 1942" on front endpaper. Supplied with a facsimile dust-jacket in mylar cover. ; Uncommon. [viii], 236 pages + frontispiece + 3 plates. 1 full page map. Original green cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine. Page dimensions: 213 x 135mm. Contents: From London to Kashgar; My First Impressions of Chin-Bagh; My Early Days in Kashgar; An Outlook on Chinese Turkestan as a Whole; The Mohammedan, or Old City of Kashgar; The Chinese, or New City, and a Chinese Dinner; Housekeeping Difficulties; Our First Leave, and Return to Kashgar with an Increased Family; Kashgari Women; A Summer Holiday among the Kirghiz; A Journey Home via Naryn and Chimkent; The Chinese Revolution; Changes in Kashgar; Good-Bye to Kashgar, and Our Journey Home through Europe in War Time; Index. "Lady Macartney married at twenty-one and went out with her husband to Kashgar [. . .] All through Southern Russia and Russian Turkestan, and over the snow-covered passes of the Tien-shan mountains, on foot and on horseback - and she had never ridden before! - this young Englishwoman - 'the most timid, unenterprising girl in the world' she calls herself - travelled for six weeks. And for seventeen years she made her home in Kashgar." - quoted from a newspaper review. Lady Macartney was the wife of Sir George Macartney (1867-1945), who was sent to Chinese Turkestan in 1890, and was appointed the British Consul at Kashgar in 1904. He was described by Frederick Marshman Bailey in 1945 as "one of our greatest experts on Central Asian affairs, a man unique in the fact that he spent twenty-eight years of his official career in Central Asia." [Reference: Obituary notice of Sir George Macartney by Colonel F. M. Bailey, in Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, Volume 32, Nos. 3-4, 1945, page 232.] " "The writer of this book is only the second Englishwoman to have been to Kashgar. To travel from Europe to that oasis-town of Central Asia is at all times and undertaking of great difficulty, necessitating a journey through the whole of Southern Russia and Russian Turkestan and arduous marching, on horseback and on foot, in order to cross the snow-clad passes of the Tien-shan mountains. It was not, however, with the object of exploring that Lady Macartney travelled. She had to make a home for her husband, who, as an officer in the Political Department of the Indian Government, was stationed at a corner of the Chinese Empire, which has unusual importance for Great Britain, as it is on the borders of the four Powers of India, Afghanistan, Russia and China. During her seventeen years' stay at Kashgar, Lady Macartney was entirely cut off from her own folk. She found, however, plenty to interest her in the local Chinese and Russians, and above all in the native Kashgarians, some of them - those of the Iranian stock - being strangely like Europeans, and others decidedly Mongolian in type, with slanting eyes, high cheek-bones and beardless chins. She was in the Chinese Revolution, as it swept over Kashgar in May 1912 taking a toll of lives; and she tells vividly how during that storm high Chinese dignitaries fleeing for safety sought, and not in vain, the asylum of her own home, the British Consulate, though it was without the protection of a single soldier. // Lady Macartney's extremely interesting story will be read by the many on whom the East still casts its spell, and incidentally will be an incentive to those women who may have amission in life similar to that by which the writer was impelled. For, after all, is it not true that women have built up the British Empire just as much as men?" - from dust-jacket blurb (dust-jacket supplied in facsimile). .