BOCK, Carl Alfred. Temples and Elephants. The Narrative of a Journey of Exploration through Upper Siam And Lao. London: Sampson, Low, et al.~i~ 1884.
8vo. Original illustrated cloth, pp. xvi, 438, [2, advertisements], one steel-engraved frontispiece-portrait of the King of Thailand, one tinted lithographic portrait of the author, lithographic folding map with author's route in red, woodcut illustrations in the text and on plates; ecpertly re-cased; a very good copy in a recent slip-case.
Very uncommon first edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to a General Consul in Danish-Norwegian, dated 1884, on the printed dedication page. This book records Carl Bock's journey to northern Thailand and Laos which had the support of H.M. King Chulalongkorn, to whom the book is dedicated. Carl Alfred Bock, a Norwegian natural scientist was the 'son of a merchant, brought up and educated in Oslo. In 1868 went to England where he married Mary Jane Absalon, and after a year of study and travel found a job with the Swedish-Norwegian Consul in Grimsby. When the Consul died, [he] moved to London to pursue his interest in natural science, building up a circle of contacts which included members of the London Zoological Society … Bock’s self-funded trip to Thailand (then called Siam) and what is now northern Thailand in 1881-2 included visits to the towns of Bangkok and Ayutthaya in central Thailand, Raheng (Tak) in the west, and in the north, Lamphun, Lakhon (Lampang), Chiangmai, Fang, Kiang Hai (Chiang Rai), and Kiang Tsen (Chiang Saen)' (Natural History Museum, online).
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