Vanished Kingdoms

Presents an illustrated history of the travels of Janet Elliott Wulsin, who with her husband in 1923, explored China, Tibet, and Mongolia, documenting Buddhist rituals and collecting 1,400 botanical and zoological specimens.

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In the early 1920s, the last great age of world explorers, a remarkable young woman, Janet Elliott Wulsin, set out with her husband, Frederick Wulsin, for the far reaches of China, Tibet and Mongolia to study the people, flora and fauna of the region. Janet'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 Wulsin's 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 tribespeople 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. Several dozen rare, hand-painted lanternslides survived and are reproduced in splendid colour. 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 testament to the great spirit and success of a remarkable woman explorer.