Captivating Readers: Middlebrow Aesthetics and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon

A bestseller during its day, Lost Horizon became the first-ever mass-market paperback and has never been out of print since its initial release…. Further demonstrating the novel’s enduring influence and appeal, Lost Horizon has inspired several sequel novels, a musical, radio adaptations, and the namesake for the Shangri-La Hotel chain. Indeed, the word Shangri-la itself was coined by Hilton and has found a place in the OED. Although not all these appropriations are necessarily to be lauded, it is clear that Lost Horizon has maintained a prominence in popular culture that is difficult to reduce or explain away in terms of mere entertainment value.