The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton: Extensively Embellished with Engravings on Copper and Wood, From Original Paintings and Drawings, by First-Rate Artists.

WALTON, Izaak and Charles Cotton.

$3,500.00

Item Number: 147997

London: John Major, Fleet Street, 1823.

First Major edition, large paper copy of this classic of English literature. Octavo, bound in full crushed levant forest green morocco by Zaehnsdorf with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt spine ornaments and cornerpieces of fish and tackle, quadruple gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles stamp-signed by Zaehnsdorf, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers, illustrated with 12 engraved plates on India paper, numerous in-text engravings, initials, and head- and tail-pieces. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Coigney 23; Westwood & Satchell, p. 225; Horne 23. Brooke Dolan II (1908-45) was an American adventurer, naturalist, sportsman, and book collector. Educated at Harvard University and Princeton University, he later became a trustee of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. During the 1930s he led two notable expeditions to China and Tibet, collecting numerous specimens that he sent back for the Academy’s collection. In 1942, during World War II, he was recruited to serve in the OSS (precursor of the CIA) and traveled to Lhasa with Ilya Tolstoy (grandson of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), searching for supply routes to China for the Allied Forces. During this time they established contact with the Tibetan government and met the seven-year-old 14th Dalai Lama–the first Americans to ever do so. He then joined the Army Air Forces, and the United States Military Observer Group in Western China, behind Japanese lines near Mao’s headquarters. He died in 1945. From the library of Sir David Salomons, 1st Baronet (1797-1873), a leading figure in the struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom during the 19th century. Salomons served as the first Jewish Sheriff and Mayor of London, and was the first Jewish magistrate in England. He served as an MP representing Greenwich, first in 1851, “but refused to take the oath ‘on the true faith of a Christian,’ a proceeding which drew the attention of the whole country to the question of Jewish disabilities. Taking his seat in the House, he was ordered to withdraw after having been heard in defense of his unprecedented action, and was subsequently fined PS500 for illegally voting. The Greenwich constituency which he represented, however, reelected him again and again; but it was not until the alteration of the Parliamentary oath in 1858, after many futile attempts, that he was enabled to take his seat without further demur in 1859, one year after Baron Lionel de Rothschild had taken his oath and his seat as M. P. for the city of London” (Jewish Encyclopedia). With Salomons’ armorial bookplate to the pastedown. In near fine condition. An stunning example with noted provenance.

Although it was originally intended as a practical guide for fisherman, Walton's Complete Angler stands as one of the finest examples of long prose-pastoral in the English language and is widely considered a classic of English literature.