Books and Manuscripts

From the Sporting Library of American Adventurer, Naturalist, and Sportsman, Brooke Dolan II.

Currier, (Nathaniel), and (James) Ives
The Trout Stream
New York: Currier & Ives, 1852. Hand-colored lithograph, by F.F. Palmer. 19 x 23 3/4 in. (483 x 603 mm). Light mat burn. In frame, 23 x 27 1/2 in. (584 x 698 mm). Gale 6715; Conningham 6230

A handsome example. 

Together with:

Winter Sports-Pickerel Fishing
(New York: Currier & Ives), 1872. Hand-colored lithograph, 12 x 16 in. (305 x 406 mm). Light mat burn; publisher's imprints at bottom partially erased. In mat and in frame, 17 x 20 in. (432 x 508 mm). 

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.