The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation. 3rd Edition, 1661. BOUND WITH; Part II, 1676, The Experienc’d Angler, 1683, and The Compleat Troller, 1682. With The Compleat Angler Part II, 1676

The Collected Edition.  

Bound in contemporary blind stamped calf, re-backed to style. The spine in six compartments with five double gilt ruled bands. A red lettering piece with hand stamped letters and decorations, to style, very neatly done. Internally new fly leaves front and back, preserving the inside front board with a contemporary manuscript table of contents.

The contents generally clean and free of water stains, but with some small stains and marks from time to time. The pages a bit toned. The binding is strong and quite readable. Some headings occasionally shaved. A pleasing example.

Part II by Charles Cotton is lacking the Roger L’Estrange License Leaf and ending material, pages 105 – 111, (1). The main text by Cotton ends at page 104.   Title page lacking publisher’s information (torn away). A complete copy of this volume in contemporary binding is included with this collection.

Housed in a fine clamshell box. Half red sheep with cloth boards, with marbled paper sides, to mimic an actual book. The spine in six compartments with five double gilt ruled bands. Title stamped directly to the second compartment from the top.

The binding and box in a near fine condition.

The volume measures 14.5 x 9.5 x 3.5 cm. Each leaf measures 140 x 88 mm.

The Cotton Volume.

Bound in contemporary blind-ruled calf, the spine in five compartments with four raised bands. Boards scuffed with corners worn. Hinges split to first cord top and bottom but still tight.

Internally VG to Fine. The first endpaper with a contemporary signature; ‘Rick Earle 1694’. Three contemporary endpapers front and three back. The Title Page with the usual weakness caused by the copper plate engraving. Internally no stains or foxing, remarkably clean.

The volume measures 15.5 x 9.5 x 1.5 cm. Each leaf measures 150 x 90 mm.

Per Wikipedia: The Compleat Angler is a book by Izaak Walton. It was first published in 1653 by Richard Marriot in London. Walton continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. It is a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse.

Walton was born in Stafford and moved to London when he was in his teens in order to learn a trade. The Compleat Angler reflects the author’s connections with these two locations. The book was dedicated to John Offley of Madeley, Staffordshire, and there are references in it to fishing in the English Midlands. However, the work begins with Londoners making a fishing trip up the Lea Valley in Hertfordshire, starting at Tottenham.

Walton was not sympathetic to the Puritan regime of the 1650s and the work has been seen as a reaction to the turbulence of the English Civil War and its aftermath; “the disorder of the present times received muted comment in the work’s scenes of harmony”, is the view of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Walton’s sources included earlier publications on the subject of fishing, such as the Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle included in the Book of Saint Albans. Six verses were quoted from John Dennys’s 1613 work The Secrets of Angling.

Editions

The Compleat Angler was published by the bookseller Richard Marriot whose business was based in Fleet Street near where Walton had a shop, in 1653. Walton was a friend of Marriot’s father John, who had started the business, but was in retirement by the time the book appeared.

The first edition featured dialogue between veteran angler Piscator and student Viator, while later editions change Viator to hunter Venator and added falconer Auceps.

There were a number of editions during the author’s lifetime. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661 (identical with that of 1664), a fourth in 1668, and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition, the thirteen chapters of the original had grown to twenty-one, and a second part was added by his friend and brother angler Charles Cotton, who took up Venator, where Walton had left him and completed his instruction in fly fishing and the making of flies.