A Wife from the Forbidden Land : The scene of this Story is laid in the Tibetan Capital during the lifetime of the predecessor of the present Dalai Lama

About The Book : The particular fascination of Mr. A. P. Crouch's new story is that the scene of its operations is placed in that weird, mysterious land, Tibet. A young Englishman of the self-reliant, strong, and adventurous type determines to visit Lhasa the sacred Tibetan capital a city which the foreigner is not allowed to explore upon pain of death. How the Englishman succeeds in his object, and how he brings back with him "A Wife from the Forbidden Land," is the function of the story to tell. Mr. Crouch knows the peoples of the wonderful East like a native; and his book is not only an engrossing romance: it is a vivid presentment of the customs, institutions, and manners of a land which is as yet but little known to the European. Now and again in these days of cheap psychology and novels of small incident, it is a pleasure to find a book like this a book which is simply and avowedly a straightforward story, told without guile and with almost boyish ingenuousness. The forbidden land of Mr. Crouch's title is, of course, Tibet, and the story is of a young Englishman's expedition to Lhassa, achieving that goal by virtue of his intimacy with the Chinese and Tibetan languages, and by his disguise as an Eastern Mongol. There is good reading in the adventures which befell him by the way the treachery of one servant and the devotion of another. About The Author : Archer Philip Crouch (1858–1934) was born in 1858 at Stanford Dingley, Berkshire. He attended Christ's Hospital and Keble College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. After university, he joined the staff of Sir Charles Tilston Bright then joined the India Rubber, Gutta Percha, and Telegraph Work Company of Silvertown. As an employee Crouch went on a number of cable-laying expeditions around the world and wrote several books based on his travels: On a Surf-Bound Coast: or, Cable-Laying in the African Tropics (1887), Glimpses of Feverland: or, A Cruise in West African Waters (1890), and the novel Captain Enderis, First West African Regiment (1893). He rose to be secretary of the company before retiring in 1924. He died in 1934.