Feb. and June 1931; January and November 1932; January-May 1933; April, May and December 1934; and May 1935. 9 x 12 inches, approximately 50 to 70 pages each:

The most “collectible” American “travel” magazine of the 20th century, as desirable for its broad range of articles on “the Orient” before World War II as for its striking Art Deco cover illustrations.

“Asia, the American magazine on the Orient”, was founded in 1917 by Willard Straight, Wall Street banker and diplomat, married to a New York heiress, who promoted American investment in China, while also co-founding the progressive political magazine, the New Republic.  After Straight’s death at the end of World War I, his wealthy widow entrusted the magazine to experienced Old Asia Hands, men and women who had lived and worked in the Far East, making “Asia” a “handbook” for wealthy American tourists, “advertising luxury goods, travel and promotion of American commerce in the Orient.” But by the 1930s, when these issues appeared, the magazine was transformed by Richard Walsh, the New York publisher married to Pearl Buck, famed author of novels on China, who shifted the emphasis to Asian culture and literature and the tumultuous political affairs of the region before World War II, which it reported with an increasingly liberal, anti-racist and anti-colonial eye and a broad definition of what encompassed the “Orient”; in these issues can be found articles on China, Japan, India, Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Hawaii, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkestan, Algeria, Ethiopia, Arabia, Palestine, and even Soviet Russia. What did not change between 1925 and 1937 were the memorable front cover illustrations by San Francisco artist Frank McIntosh – masterpieces in vibrant colors which have given “Asia” lasting fame among connoisseurs of Art Deco illustration.