Rosita Forbes was a significant figure among travel writers between World Wars I and II--and slightly beyond. Publishing many books and articles in popular periodicals, she also lectured widely in England and the United States, achieving a reputation as a traveler, explorer, and adventurer. Indeed, Tibet and New Zealand are the only two countries that she never visited, and she experienced everything she described in her writings.

The year of Forbes's birth varies according to source: the 1961-1970 supplement to The Dictionary of National Biography (1970) says she was born in 1890; The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1972), Twentieth-Century Authors (1942), and the Longman Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature (1970) say 1893; and Contemporary Authors suggests 1895. Forbes was born Joan Rosita Torr at Riseholme Hall, Swinderley, Lincolnshire, the eldest of the six children of Herbert James Torr, a less-than-wealthy landowner who was a member of Parliament, and Rosita Graham Torr. Forbes's early education--first at...