Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man's Recreation, The by RACKHAM, Arthur; WALTON, Izaak

Philadelphia: David McKay Co., 1931. "I envy no body but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do". [RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man's Recreation. Being a Discourse of Rivers, Fishponds, Fish and Fishing not unworthy the Perusal of most Anglers. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Philadelphia: David McKay Co., [1931]. First American trade edition. Quarto (9 7/16 x 7 3/16 inches; 239 x 183 mm.). 223, (1) pp. Twelve color plates, including frontispiece, with captioned tissue guards. Twenty-five black and white illustrations. Title printed in green and black. Publishers dark blue ribbed cloth over boards, front cover and spine decoratively stamped in gilt. Pictorial endpapers, top edge gilt. A very fine copy with the original color pictorial dust jacket with a 'titled' version of the color plate "Marry, God requite you, sir, and we'll eat it cheerfully" (facing p. 82) on the front panel. Original blue cardboard box with the same color illustration as on the dust jacket pasted on the top panel and a white label "The Compleat Angler / Izaak Walton / Illustrated by Arthur Rackham" on the lower edge. Two corners of box lid neatly repaired. "No fewer than six plates have landscape backgrounds, plates which should remind us of Rackham's very serious reputation as a landscape painter, with a fine vision of natural forms" (Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 159). Izaak Walton (1593-1683), "English biographer, who is best known for The Compleat Angler (1653), a classic guide to the joys of fishing with over 300 new printings. It combines practical information about angling with folklore. The story of three friends, traveling through the English countryside, is enlivened by occasional songs, ballads, quotations from several writers, and glimpses of an idyllic and now lost rural life...The Compleat Angler was a combination of manual and meditation. 'Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.' (The Compleat Angler) The work became one of the most reprinted books in the history of British letters. The story is of three sportsmen: a fisherman (Piscator, who is Walton himself), a huntsman (Venator), and a fowler (Auceps). They travel along the river Lea on the first day in May and discuss the relative merits of their favorite pastimes. Auceps tells how 'the very birds of the air, those that be not Hawks, are both so many and so useful and pleasant to mankind, that I must not let them pass without some observations. They both feed and refresh him; feed him with their choice bodies, and refresh him with their heavenly voices.' In his own turn Venator defends hunting: 'Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise than hunting the Wild Boar, the Stag, the Buck, the Fox, or the Hare? How doth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity!' And finally Piscator reminds his friends: 'I might tell you that Almighty God is said to have spoken to a fish, but never to a beast; that he hath made a whale a ship, to carry and set his prophet, Jonah, safe on the appointed shore.' Walton drew his work on Nicholas Breton's (c. 1545-1626) fishing idyll Wits Trenchmour (1597). The second edition was largely rewritten and in the fifth edition Walton wrote about fly-fishing on the river Dove, a subject the author himself knew little about. The last [i.e., fifth] edition was published in 1676 and included additional material by Charles Cotton (Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a Clear Stream) and Colonel Robert Venables's The Experienced Angler, or Angling Improved. Walton called this work The Universal Angler. He had taught Cotton but never met Venables" ("Izaak Walton (1593-1683)" at Pegasos-A Literature Related Resource Site). Latimore & Haskell pp. 66-67. Riall, p. 175.