Books and Manuscripts

A Rare and Early American Angling Club Pamphlet for a “Piscatorial Celebration”

Proceedings of the Cincinnati Angling Club
Cincinnati: Printed at the Chronicle Office, 1831. First edition. 8vo. 8 pp. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Illustrated with an engraved fish device on title-page and in-text wood engraved fish on p. (3). Stab-sewn gathering, original thread intact; all edges trimmed; foxing and pale dampstaining on title-page; dampstaining in top edge of text; foxing to text; in blue cloth box. Sabin 65827; Henderson, p. 85; Goodspeed, pp. 108-110; OCLC 20400858

“Between the old social fishing clubs and those of later date which were organized more definitely for sport, there was however, another type. One such institution was the Cincinnati Angling Club organized in 1830. Lewis Howell, ‘an excellent angler, a good merchant and an honest man,’ was its first president. Other members were Governor MacArthur of Ohio, Honorable James Hall, Honorable M. Bibb, and General Leslie Combs. In 1831 this club celebrated its first year anniversary by a dinner, publishing an eight-page pamphlet account of the post-prandial doings.” (Goodspeed)

Rare. This is the first copy offered at auction since 2001. OCLC locates only four copies: Princeton University, Harvard University, Indiana Historical Society Library, and the Library of Congress.

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.