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

(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. 16mo. (xvi), 255, (17) pp. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II, in his custom cloth box. Illustrated with engraved title-page with piscatorial cartouche, 10 in-text engravings of fish, and two-pages of sheet music for “The Anglers Song” by Henry Lawes. Full green morocco, stamped in gilt, light rubbing and faint scratching to boards; all edges gilt; title-page slightly darkened; spotting to text; small repairs in top edge, pp. 149/150, 163-166, 181/182, 213/214, and S2-4; R8 laid down; in blue cloth box, 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, an ode to the contemplative life and man's relationship with nature. This is largely a reissue of the 1661 third edition (see lot 97) with a new title-page, omission of the errata, and with corrected text.

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.