Books and Manuscripts

Halford, Frederic M. 
Dry Fly Entomology A Brief Description Of Leading Types of Natural Insects Serving as Food For Trout & Grayling...
London: Vinton & Co., Limited, 1897. In two volumes. First deluxe edition, #86/100 numbered copies, signed by the author on each title-page. 4to. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Volume I with 28 plates and numerous in-text illustrations, Volume II with 100 hand-tied colorful flies in 12 recessed card mounts. Publisher's dark green morocco over beveled-edge boards, stamped in gilt; spines and boards unevenly browned, joints and extremities rubbed, head cap of Volume II perished; top edge of Volume I gilt, other edges untrimmed and mostly unopened, all edges gilt on Volume II; marbled endpapers; scattered foxing to plates. Lot also includes a copy of the second revised edition of same title, with the book-plate of angling collector Arthur E. Wilson-Browne.

Unsophisticated limited edition set of Frederic Halford's fourth book on fly fishing, further developing his famous dry-fly technique, now a staple in the angling world. A dry-fly is an artificial lure designed to imitate various insects and that floats on the surface of the water rather than sinking below it. It was originally championed by Halford for trout fishing in English chalk streams. 

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.