Books and Manuscripts

[Fishing] (Nobbes, Robert)
The Compleat Troller, or, the Art of Trolling…
London: Printed by T. James for Tho. Helder, 1682. First edition (with break in type of “E” on fourth line of title-page and with hook on p. 37 pointing to the right). 12mo. (xx), 78, (2) pp. From the fishing library of Alfred Denison, and the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Title ruled in red ink. Illustrated with two in-text woodcuts. Full green straight grain morocco, stamped in blind on front and rear boards with a piscatorial cartouche a la title-page of Walton's Compleat Angler, ruled and lettered in gilt, boards and spine unevenly browned, extremities rubbed, scattered soiling, boards warped; all edges gilt; possibly by or in the style of Thomas Gosden; brown endpapers; Denison's gilt morocco book-plate on front paste-down, large 19th-century sporting book book-plate below same, with “G.T.” or “T.G.” monogram, by Scott; old collator's inscription on front blank, dated April 3, 1838; gutter starting at title-page; soiling to title-page; spotting and mild darkening to text; dampstaining in bottom edge of most text leaves; leaf G loose. Westwood & Satchell, p. 156

The true first edition of this very rare work on angling, typically confused with the 1790 reprint. Nobbes has been considered the “father of trollers” and was the “earliest…that discoursed at large, and in a substantial shape, on it.” (Westwood & Satchell)

Alfred Denison was a noted 19th-century book collector, remembered for his library of fishing books, which were sold in 1933 and 1949, and helped form Thomas Westwood's important library of English angling books.   

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.