Books and Manuscripts

Fine First Edition of Izaak Walton's Angling Classic

London: Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, 1653. First edition (p. 245 in later state with “contentment"; early state trout engraving at center of p. 71; preponderance of text uncorrected, per Horne; corrected text on pp. 103, 113, 123, 135, 152, and 197). Small 8vo. (xvi), 246 pp. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II, in his custom cloth box. Illustrated with engraved title-page with piscatorial cartouche; six in-text engravings of fish (trout, pike, carp, tench, perch, and barbel) variously attributed to Lombart, Faithorne or Vaughan; two-pages of engraved sheet music for “The Anglers Song” by Henry Lawes; some woodcut initials. Full green morocco, stamped in gilt; all edges gilt; moire silk endleaves; red morocco book-plate of Rudolph August Witthaus on front paste-down; text trimmed close in top edge, just touching some running headlines; light soiling to title-page and text; scattered light dampstaining in top and fore-edges; repaired closed tear in lower fore-edge, pp. 149/150, other small minor wear to text edges; text corrected in a contemporary hand, p. 169; in red cloth box, “Brooke Dolan 1940” stamped in gilt on front panel. Coigney 1; Pforzheimer 1048; Westwood & Satchel, p. 217; Horne 1; Grolier, English 31, Grolier, Wither to Prior 947

A fine and very rare first edition of Izaak Walton's beloved classic on fishing and the joys of being in nature, a cornerstone of English literature. 
The Compleat Angler is one of the most popular books ever published in the English language and has remained continuously in print over the last 370 years since this first edition, going through an astonishing 300-plus editions. More than just an angling manual, Walton’s work is a philosophical ode to the pleasures of nature and a meditation on friendship and “the virtues of life and on moderate living.” (Horne, p. IX).

Written in the aftermath of the English Civil War, Walton’s ability to render in prose the “idyllic form of the quiet pastoral life of serene contentment" (Horne, p. IX) likely offered readers a much needed escape after years of turmoil, with themes that still resonate today. Walton spent the remainder of his life working on this text, and four more expanded and revised editions appeared in his lifetime (see the following four lots)—"which gives to this edition an importance other than that due its priority.” (Pforzheimer)
First editions are rare to market, this copy is fresh to auction after 80-plus years.

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.

Rudolph August Witthaus, Jr. (1846-1915) was an American physician, chemist, and toxicologist, as well as a noted bibliophile and “ardent disciple of Izaak Walton” (Resolutions in Memory of Rudolph August Witthaus, 1916, p. 528). He was an authority on poisons in the United States, and was called as expert witness in a large number of poisoning cases, notably in the cases of Carlyle Harris, Buchanan, Mayer, Fleming, and Molineux.