Lost Horizon old, the doctor had told Rutherford, "Most old of anyone I have ever seen," implying that it was Lo-Tsen, aged drastically by her departure from Shangri-La. The narrator wonders whether Conway can find his way back to his lost paradise. The book, published in 1933, caught the notice of the public only after Hilton's "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" was published in 1934. "Lost Horizon" became a huge popular success and in 1939 was published in paperback form, as Pocket Book #1. Because of its number-one position in what became a very long list of pocket editions, "Lost Horizon" is often mistakenly
James Hilton (novelist) a darker side. Flaws in the English society of his time – particularly narrow-mindedness and class-consciousness – were frequently his targets. His novel "We Are Not Alone", despite its inspirational-sounding title, is a grim story of legally approved lynching brought on by wartime hysteria in Britain. Freud – an early admirer (though he considered "The Meadows of the Moon" below par) – came to conclude that Hilton had wasted his talent by being too prolific. First published in 1933, this novel won Hilton the Hawthornden Prize in 1934. Later, Pocket Books, which pioneered the publication of small, soft-cover, inexpensive books,