James Hilton (novelist) picked "Lost Horizon" as its first title in 1939. For that reason, the novel is frequently called the book that began the "paperback revolution." Hilton is said to have been inspired to write "Lost Horizon", and to invent "Shangri-La" by reading the "National Geographic Magazine" articles of Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan borderlands. Still living in Britain at the time, Hilton was perhaps influenced by the Tibetan travel articles of early travellers in Tibet whose writings were found in the British Library. Christian Zeeman, the Danish father of the mathematician Christopher
James Hilton (novelist) his two most remembered books, "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" while living in a house on Oak Hill Gardens, in Woodford Green in north London. The house still stands, with a blue plaque marking Hilton's residence. By 1938 he had moved to California, and his work became more connected with the Hollywood film industry. While in California, Hilton was also host of one of radio's prestige drama anthologies, "Hallmark Playhouse", from 1948-1952. He married Alice Brown, a secretary at the BBC, just before they left for the United States in 1935, but they divorced in 1937. He then married