Books and Manuscripts

Thomas Gosden's Copy in His Own Charming Angling-Themed Binding

[Gosden, Thomas] Bowlker, Richard (and Charles)
The Art of Angling Improved, in all its parts, Especially Fly-Fishing…
Worcester: Printed by M. Olivers, no date (ca. 1758). First edition. 12mo. (iv), 95 pp. From the library of English bookbinder Thomas Gosden, with his illustrated book-plate on front paste-down; and from the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II, in his custom cloth box. Full green straight-grain morocco, stamped in gilt on each board with corner floral ornaments and at center with a fisherman on the banks of a river; all edges gilt; by Gosden; in green cloth box, stamped in gilt on front panel “Brooke Dolan 1940”. Westwood & Satchel, p. 39

From the library of Thomas Gosden (1780-1840), esteemed English bookbinder, publisher, book collector, and specialist in sport and angling. Bound by him in his own angling-themed binding for which he was particularly known, and that is reflective of his work which Hobson says, was "quite unlike anything done by his contemporaries." This first edition work on angling “appeared in the name of Richard Bowlker, the father, but in the second [edition] Charles Bowlker seems to lay claim to the work.” (Westwood & Satchell, p. 40)

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.