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.

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.