One Man’s Mountain’ is a powerful and energetic memoir describing how what seem to be distant and unachievable dreams can become real and develop into a life’s experience that is way beyond what was thought possible. The book depicts life’s experiences leading from war-time to normal peacetime living. An ordinary suburban lifestyle enables the writer to explore and adventure on two wheels and brings to life a competitive spirit, which causes the writer to see and develop an ambition. The goal to be achieved centres upon an island in the Irish Sea, yet seems beyond reach. The difficulty is that it combined the need to ride and earn a living! Yet strangely, work and play relate.

Thomas Grahame Bailey (1872 1942) had the components of this work printed in individual parts in India between 1902 and 1906. The Royal Asiatic Society in London decided to collect and publish them in 1908 in its monograph series, incorporating a preface by Bailey. The pagination is not continuous as already printed sheets of the earlier studies were reused. Twenty-six dialects from the hill regions of the northern and north-western Himalayas are covered in some detail, including grammar, vocabulary, their relationship to each other, and some songs. Bailey's work was pioneering: he had travelled among the hill peoples, being initiated into tribal rites and secret vocabularies, often of a criminal nature. There had been no previous publications on the grammar or philology of these dialects, merely some translated Christian texts. Bailey subsequently published a number of works on languages of the Indian subcontinent, including a history of Urdu literature.

The world of Aeldun is frozen. Spring has not shown her face for a century, and mankind has turned its back on her. Behind the high walls of Winloryn, magic has become nothing more than a fairytale. Alchemical miracles and clockwork marvels keep the city warm, the gardens growing, and the people contentedly quiet. Beyond the city, where few dare tread, Jacob Haskins and his dearest companion, Lady Fox, endeavor to return Spring to Aeldun. When the pair aren't tending to the shivering forest folk, they move among the people of Winloryn, guiding the hand of science without revealing their clandestine pasts. An unexpected sign of Spring in the distant mountains finds its way to Jacob and Fox, whilst unnatural events in the underworks of Winloryn begin to overtake the artificial gardens. Behind it all the specter of a long-dormant evil looms, an evil only Jacob, the Last Druid of Aeldun, can face.

This book, from the series Primary Sources: Historical Books of the World (Asia and Far East Collection), represents an important historical artifact on Asian history and culture. Its contents come from the legions of academic literature and research on the subject produced over the last several hundred years. Covered within is a discussion drawn from many areas of study and research on the subject. From analyses of the varied geography that encompasses the Asian continent to significant time periods spanning centuries, the book was made in an effort to preserve the work of previous generations.