Heading:
Author: Stein, Aurel
Title: On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and North-Western China
Place Published: London
Publisher:Macmillan and Co., Limited
Date Published: 1933
Description:

xxiv, 342 + [2] ad pp. Numerous plates from photographs, including several folding panoramas; color plates of artifacts with tissue guards; folding color map. 23.5x16.3 cm (9?x6?"), original terra cotta cloth with gilt cover vignette, top edge gilt. First Edition.

Presentation copy inscribed in ink on a piece of paper neatly affixed at front endpaper, "Presented for Professor Kenneth Mason with kindest regards of A. Stein, December, 1932." This would thus have been a very early copy. The recipient, Lieut-Colonel Kenneth Mason MC (1887-1976) was a British soldier and geographer notable as the first statutory professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. His work surveying the Himalayas was rewarded in 1927 with a Royal Geographical Society Founder's Medal, the citation reading "for his connection between the surveys of India and Russian Turkestan, and his leadership of the Shaksgam Expedition." The work is a comprehensive summary of the results of Aurel Stein's first three Central Asian expeditions and of his researches carried out during the years 1900-1916.

A little rubbing to extremities and to the gilt on the cover medallion; top corner of front cover a bit bumped, very small bump to fore-edge of rear cover; still in very good to near fine condition, an attractive copy with important association.