Collins, D. G.; Oh, Nai. Lao First Reader. Chiang Mai, [Thailand]: [NA], 1897. First Edition. [1195]
The wrapper is black pebble cloth over paper, cloth is chipped at the edges with loss, about a third of the cloth over the spine is missing, bindings strings loosening with some minor separations, nothing is detached. 6 x 9 1/4 inches, 128 clean pp. Bookplate and blindstamp of a church library. Good.
OCLC 422285225; one location. Titles and imprint in Lao with an English title and author names also printed on the title page. Text is in Lao script.
Western Lao "spoken in the principality of Chieng-Mai and other districts, and used by the American missionaries." - Darlow & Moule, II-3, p. 1375.
The printings at Chieng-Mai (according to D. & M.) were done on the presses of the American Bible Society. The first noted was in 1893, a translation of Matthew's Gospel. The printing of the Lao character, "with a fount of type specially prepared in 1890 by S. C. Peoples, an American Presbyterian missionary, and sent out from the United States to Siam for this purpose." - ibid, p. 1376. There is no mention of this 1897 publication in Darlow & Moule.
Between 1891 and 1897 there were only six items printed on the Chieng-Mai press recorded by D. & M.
David Ghormley Collins (1855-1917), manager of the American Presbyterian Mission Press at Chiengmai. He was appointed as a missionary of the North Siam Mission in 1886 and died in 1917. He founded the Prince Royal's College in Chiang Mai in 1887, which is still in operation.
D. & M. does not mention the American Presbyterian Mission Press at Chieng-Mei, but the two entities must have worked closely together and/or overlapped, for in 1882 the A. B. S. appointed a former Presbyterian missionary, John Carrington, as its agent to oversee Bible translation and printing in Siam.