Books and Manuscripts

The Last Lifetime Edition of Walton's Classic

Walton, Izaak, and Charles Cotton, and Robert Venables
The Universal Angler, Made so, by Three Books of Fishing. The First Written by Mr. Izaak Walton; The Second by Charles Cotton Esq; The Third by Col. Robert Venables…
London: Printed for Richard Marriott, 1676. Three parts in one volume, as issued. Fifth edition of Walton; first edition of Cotton; fourth edition of Venables. Small 8vo. (xxviii), 275, (13); (x), 111, (1); (xvi), 96, (6) pp.; without A5-8 in Part II ("To the Reader"), as called for in Pforzheimer, although not mentioned in Coigney, Horne, or Westwood & Satchell. From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II, in his custom cloth box. Illustrated with ten in-text engravings of fish and two pages of sheet music in Part I; ten in-text engravings of fish in Part III; engraved piscatorial cartouche on Part I sectional title-page; engraved Walton-Cotton cipher on Part II title-page; engraved frontispiece for Part III. Full green pebbled morocco, stamped in gilt; all edges gilt; text trimmed close, just touching some headlines and engraved cipher on Part II title-page; scattered minor spotting to text; small repair in lower fore-edge, pp. 233/234 in Part I; repair in lower fore-edge of Part II title-page; bottom corner A6 in Part III repaired; in red cloth box, “Brooke Dolan 1940” stamped in gilt on front panel. Coigney 6; Pforzheimer 1052; Horne 6; Westwood & Satchell, pp. 219-220

The fifth and last lifetime edition of Walton's classic work on fishing and man's relationship to nature. This is the first edition of the Compleat Angler to print Walton's name on the title-page, and “was issued as Part I of The Universal Angler which included the first printing of Charles Cotton's, The Compleat Angler Being Instructions how to angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear Stream as Part II, and the fourth edition of Col. Robert Venables', The Experienced Angler, Part III. This is the only time that this improbable trio of Walton, retired businessman and friend of bishops; Cotton, onetime captain in the King's army, financially irresponsible estate owner, and poetaster; and Venables, commander in Cromwell's army and veteran of a West Indies campaign, ever appeared together in print.” (Horne, p. 20)

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.