presentation copy to Clements Markham

Clements Markham's copy of this important work on the Dyaks, subsequently owned by his good friend and cousin Sir Albert Hastings Markham (1841-1918). Inscriptions reads: 'Clements L. Markham FSA / From the Author / Dec. 7'.

Sir Clements Robert Markham (1830-1916) remains famous for his involvement in polar exploration culminating in his supervision of the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1904. At the time he would have received this copy he was in his mid-thirties and still working in the India office, having recently travelled to both Peru and India and already with his first Arctic voyage under his belt. It is interesting that he was already identified as a rising star despite still being a junior clerk in the India office.

Boyle trained as a lawyer, but spent most of his life travelling. In 1863 he set out for Sarawak with his brother, and this account of their experiences is amongst the first of his travels to be published. His account of Borneo's native people, the Dyaks, is typical in tone of contemporary European accounts, but he also includes notes on the flora and fauna he saw, and gives an appraisal of James Brooke's reign as the first white Rajah of Sarawak.

First edition; 8vo (23 x 15.5 cm); presentation inscription to half title, wood-engraved frontispiece, armorial bookplate to pastedown; publisher's original blindstamped cloth, gilt vignette to upper board, gilt lettering to spine, a little rubbed and bumped, a few chips to spine, still a very good copy; xii, 324, [12] pp.

Speake (Literature of Travel and Exploration), p.116.