[Fishing] (Walton, Izaak): The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative man's Recreation. Being a Discourse of Rivers, and Fish-Ponds, and Fish, and Fishing...

The Utterson Copy of Walton's Scarce Second Edition

(Walton, Izaak)
The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative man's Recreation. Being a Discourse of Rivers, and Fish-Ponds, and Fish, and Fishing...
London: Printed for T.M. for Rich. Marriot, 1655. The Second Edition much enlarged. 12mo. (xxiv), 355, (5) pp. From the library of English antiquarian Edward Vernon Utterson, and the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Illustrated with engraved title-page with piscatorial cartouche, 10 in-text engravings of fish (trout, pike, carp, tench, perch, barbel, bream, eel, loach, and bullhead), and two folding pages of engraved sheet music for “The Anglers Song” by Henry Lawes. Full green straight-grain morocco, stamped in gilt; all edges gilt; gilt dentelles; red endpapers; white morocco armorial book-plate of Utterson on front paste-down; old annotations on verso of front free endpaper and second front blank; light wear and spotting to title-page, "B” in Being on same appears to be sometime filled in with old ink, very small loss at top center edge of same; occasional spotting to text; in green cloth case, stamped in gilt on front board “Brooke Dolan 1940”. Coigney 2; Pforzheimer 1049; Horne 2; Westwood & Satchel, p. 218

The Utterson copy of the rare second edition of Izaak Walton's classic meditation on man, nature, and fishing. Walton made major changes to this edition, including the addition of four more copperplates of fish, seven more chapters (comprising 109 additional pages), as well as changing the names of the two narrative's two interlocutors to Piscator and Venator, and added a third one, Auceps. For the first time seven laudatory verses by Walton's friends were added at front, and much more dialogue and descriptive fishing instructions were added to the text. Of the 48 misprints in the first edition, all but five were corrected, but according to Horne, they were “offset by new irregularities not in the first edition.”

The second edition has traditionally been deemed scarcer than the first. An old manuscript note in the front of this copy attests to that thought, stating that “Mr. Park says that this second edition is still more rare than the first. Sir John Hawkins says he has never been able to see it”, while Pforzheimer states that “copies of this second edition have long been reputed to be rarer than those of the first but no one seems to have verified this by actual count.” (p. 1085)

Edward Vernon Utterson (1775/76-1856) was an English literary antiquarian, lawyer, editor, and writer. He was a founding member of the Roxburghe Club, fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and member of the Atheneum Club, Camden Club, and Royal Society of Arts. He established a private press at Beldornie Tower, his home on the Isle of Wight, where he published many editions of English literature. His library was sold in two sales, the first from April 19-27, 1852, and the second, from March 20-27, 1857, eight months after his death.

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.

Edward Vernon Utterson

Brooke Dolan II, thence by descent in the family