DAVID-NÉEL, Alexandra.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Autobiographical archive of letters, typescripts, photographs, and a holographic manuscript. A compact and unusually rich archive of manuscripts, typescripts, letters, and a rare early portrait of the 13th Dalai Lama, illuminating the life and working methods of Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969), the pioneering explorer and Buddhist scholar whose My Journey to Lhasa (1927) made her the most celebrated Western interpreter of Tibet. Chief among the contents are the original four-page manuscript draft of the introduction to My Journey to Lhasa and a substantially revised 21-page typescript, both revealing her voice with uncommon immediacy and preserving material omitted from the published text. The archive also includes a vivid ten-page typescript recounting a confrontation with Tibetan robbers, three autograph letters to her friend Basiswar "Boshi" Sen discussing the preparation and placement of her articles, and a studio portrait of the 13th Dalai Lama, probably taken in Calcutta in 1910 during his exile.Taken together, these documents trace David-Néel's intellectual formation, her pivotal meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1912, and the arduous travels that culminated in her clandestine entry into Lhasa in 1924. They also map her relationships with central figures in the Buddhist and artistic circles of the period, including the Roerichs, and illustrate the publication pathway that led to her landmark book. With correspondence from her brief return to Calcutta immediately after re

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