Paris, John
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK diplomat and author Frank Trelawny Arthur Ashton-Gwatkin (1889-1976), who specialized in Japanese affairs through much of his earlier professional career, though the publication of his first novel, Kimono (1921), with its negative assessment of Japanese culture, curtailed his influence in the Far East, though his career advanced in the UK, where he retired as minister of HM diplomatic missions in 1947. The Island Beyond Japan (1929) is a Lost Race tale, somewhat prefiguring James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1932), the protagonists of both novels (each of them high in the British foreign service) finding a possible surcease from 1920s world-weariness in Transcendence imparted through ancient wisdom. [JC]
Frank Trelawny Arthur Ashton-Gwatkin
born London: 14 April 1889
died Chichester, West Sussex: 29 January 1976
works
- The Island Beyond Japan (London: W Collins Sons and Co, 1929) [hb/uncredited]
links
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