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, making it the first "mass-market" paperback.[1]
By the 1960s, Pocket Books alone, over the course of more than 40 printings, had sold several million copies of Lost Horizon, helping to make it one of the most popular novels of the 20th Century.[2]
United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt named the Presidential hideaway in Maryland, now called Camp David, after Shangri-La.[3] In 1942, to ensure the safety of returning U.S. forces, Roosevelt answered a reporter's question about the origin of the Doolittle Raid by saying it had been launched from "Shangri-La". The true details of the raid were revealed to the public a year later.[4] This inspired the naming of the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La (CV-38), commissioned in 1944.[5][6]
Lost Horizon's concept of Shangri-La has gone on to influence other quasi-Asian mystical locations in fiction including Marvel Comics' K'un L'un and DC Comics' Nanda Parbat.
