Books and Manuscripts

Walton's Classic Work in a fine Gosden Angling-Themed Binding 

(Walton, Izaak)
The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative man's Recreation. Being a Discourse of Rivers, Fish-ponds, Fish, & Fishing. To which is added, The Laws of Angling: With a new Table of the Particulars in this Book
London: Printed for R. Marriot, 1668. The fourth Edition, much corrected and enlarged. Small 8vo. (xvi), 255, (17) pp. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II, in his custom cloth case. Illustrated with engraved title-page with piscatorial cartouche, ten in-text engravings of fish, and two pages of sheet music for “The Anglers Song” by Henry Lawes. Full green straight-grain morocco, finely stamped in gilt with alternating fish and basket ornaments, with fishermen on a riverbank stamped in gilt on front board, and of a house with “Piscatoribus Sacrum” on rear board, spine darkened; all edges gilt; by Thomas Gosden; text trimmed closed, just touching some running headlines, largely at rear; small repair at center of title-page; staining at center of A2; scattered light soiling to text; scattered marginalia. With the illustrated book-plate of Rev. H.S. Cotton on front paste-down, with his signature on same; ink stamp of W. Chapman at head of A2; in green cloth case, stamped in gilt “Brooke Dolan 1940”. Coigney 5; Pforzheimer 1051; Horne 5; Westwood & Satchel p. 219

Penultimate lifetime edition of Walton's classic work on fishing, in a fine Thomas Gosden angling-themed binding. Gosden (1780-1840) was an esteemed English bookbinder, publisher, book collector, and specialist in sport and angling. Bound in his own angling-themed binding for which he was particularly known, and is reflective of his work which Hobson says, was "quite unlike anything done by his contemporaries."

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.

Horatio Salusbury Cotton (ca. 1774-1846) was the son of Robert Salusbury Cotton of Reigate, and the Ordinary (Chaplain) of Newgate Prison from 1814-37. His angling library was sold by Sotheby's in 1838, and in subsequent sales.