ROYAL QUARTO DELUXE LIMITED 100TH EDITION OF WALTON AND COTTON’S COMPLEAT ANGLER, RICHLY EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH MORE THAN 200 ENGRAVED PORTRAITS AND VIEWS, SUMPTUOUSLY BOUND IN INLAID MOROCCO-GILT

WALTON, Izaak and COTTON, Charles. The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation: Being a Discourse of Rivers, Fish-ponds, Fish and Fishing… Edited and Arranged by R. B. Marston. With 54 Photogravures and About 100 Woodcuts. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1888. Two volumes. Royal quarto, early 20th-century full dark green crushed levant morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and covers with flies and fish of inlaid red, tan and black morocco, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt. Housed in custom slipcases.    $18,500.

Royal Quarto Edition de Luxe of the 100th edition, number 98 of only 250 copies signed by Marston, illustrated with 103 mounted wood-engravings on India paper and sumptuously and beautifully extra-illustrated with 113 fine engraved portraits and 97 lovely engraved views. Two large quarto volumes beautifully bound by Morrell in morocco-gilt with morocco inlays depicting fish, flies and the authors’ initials.

First published in 1653, Walton’s Compleat Angler is perhaps the single best-known work in English on fishing. “The sub-title is significant. The Angler is a ‘piscatorial classic,’ but it has been read and loved by countless people who have never encountered fish except at a table” (Sampson, Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, 385). This edition, called the “Lea and Dove Edition” (after the authors’ favorite rivers), is a reissue of the first two parts of the fifth edition of 1676, and is the first edited by Robert Bright Marston, long-time editor of Fishing Gazette, considered by British fly-fishermen as “the direct word from Mt. Olympus” (Gingrich, 244). This very scarce extra-illustrated issue does not include the 54 full-page photogravures by Emerson and Bankart issued with the regular edition, replacing them instead with the 210 window-mounted engravings. Oliver 124. Coigney 139 (royal quarto edition).

Front joint of Volume I skillfully and almost invisibly repaired; upper portion of rear joint tender. A most exquisitely bound copy, lavishly extra-illustrated, in fine condition.