Books and Manuscripts

From The Sporting Library Of American Adventurer, Naturalist, and Sportsman, Brooke Dolan II

Boyer, Ralph Ludwig
Young Trout
No date (ca. 1930s). Drypoint, signed by Boyer in pencil bottom right. 8 x 10 in. (203 x 254 mm) (sight). In mat and unexamined out of frame, 14 3/4 x 16 3/4 in. (375 x 425 mm).

Together with:

Moore, Benson B. 
Rockfish
No date. Color aquatint and etching, signed and numbered by Moore at bottom; #50/50. 7 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. (197 x 241 mm) (sight). In mat and unexamined out of frame, 15 1/2 x 16 1/4 in. (394 x 413 mm). 

Together with:

Simpson, Joseph
Border Angler
Circa 1927. Etching with drypoint, signed and numbered by Simpson at bottom; #37/75. 17 1/2 x 12 1/4 in. (444 x 311 mm). Light mat burn; small perforation holes along edges. In paper mat.

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.