Books and Manuscripts

Couch, Jonathan
A History of the Fishes of the British Islands
London: Groombridge and Sons, 1864-65. In four volumes. First edition. Tall 8vo. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Illustrated with 252 colored engravings and numerous black and white in-text engravings, after drawings by Couch; each plate with tissue guard. Near-contemporary three-quarter crimson morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt, joints and extremities rubbed and moderately worn; top edges gilt; marbled endpapers; tape residue on recto and verso title-page of Vol. III, and on p. (iii) of same; blue ownership ink stamp on verso of plates xii, xxxiii, lxii, lxxi, lxxxiii, lxxxv, cvii, cxxi, cxl, cxlv, clvi, clxvi, clxxx, cxcviii, ccxiv, ccxxvi, and ccxlvi; scattered spotting to text; scattered offsetting from plates.

Handsome first edition of English naturalist Jonathan Couch's great work on British fishes, a text that established him as an authority on the subject.

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.