Books and Manuscripts

The First Complete Book on Angling Written in America

(Brown, John J.)
The American Angler's Guide. Being a Compilation from the Works of Popular English authors, from Walton to the Present Time; Together with the Opinions and Practices of the Best American Anglers…
New-York: Burgess, Stringer & Co., 1845. First edition. 12mo. 224, (5, ads) pp. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Illustrated with a wood engraved frontispiece and two wood engraved plates of different hooks. Publisher's brown pictorial cloth-covered boards, stamped in blind and in gilt, loss along spine, front and rear joints cracked, soiling to fore-edge of front and rear boards; all edges trimmed; contemporary bookseller's ticket on front paste-down; old ownership signature in pencil on front free endpaper; scattered spotting to text; ink stain in top edge of some leaves at center; in orange cloth case. Westwood & Satchel, p. 4; Goodspeed, pp. 159-163; Gingrich, The Fishing in Print, p. 154

Lot also includes copies of the fourth edition (New-York, 1849) and fifth edition (New York, 1876, from the sporting library of William Mitchell Van Winkle), each in original cloth. 

First edition of the first complete book on angling written in America, “among the scarcest items of American angling literature" (Gingrich, The Fishing in Print, p. 154). Published by New York tackle dealer John J. Brown, the “contents comprise a description of the more important American fish and the methods of capture, observations on the practice of angling with extracts from English angling books, a chapter on tackle and baits with a few contributions from American fishermen, and some account of the author's own limited experience with the rod.” (Goodspeed, p. 159)

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.