The Complete Angler: or the contemplative man's recreation. Being a discourse of rivers, fish-ponds, fish and fishing, and instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream. With original memoirs and notes by Sir Harris Nicolas.

London: William Pickering,, 1836. This edition requires, more than most, our mature and critical consideration First Nicolas edition, large paper "special" issue with the plates in two states, handsomely bound by Riviere & Son. High praise has long been lavished on this fine edition, edited by the antiquarian Harris Nicolas: Percy Muir describes it as "one of the best, perhaps the very best... it was printed by Whittingham and in the special edition with the plates as proofs on india paper it makes a very handsome book" (Muir, p. 21). The publisher William Pickering was himself a keen angler and collector of angling books; for this edition he "commissioned the artist Thomas Stothard to visit Dovedale [in the Peak District] to produce sketches" (ODNB). In orotund prose, the bibliographer of angling Thomas Westwood conjures up a memorable picture of this edition: "Walton's simple work puts on the purple of an unaccustomed sovereignty, and is scarcely to be recognized in its new and splendid investiture. The result of seven years continuous labour, and of much patient research and fostering care on the part of its publisher, this edition requires, more than most, our mature and critical consideration". Two volumes, quarto (283 x 200 mm). Finely bound in green crushed morocco by Riviere & Son, spines with five raised bands, lettered in gilt to second and fourth compartments, remaining compartments richly gilt with intricate flower and leaf tools, triple gilt fillet border to covers, red coated endpapers, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. With 122 engraved plates and woodcut vignettes by Stothard and Inskipp, all on india paper, with tissue guards. Title pages printed in red and black. Bookseller stamp to front free endpaper verso. Bindings lightly rubbed, a few small marks and bumps, slight foxing and damp staining to plates, contents otherwise clean. A handsome set. Horne, Compleat Angler, 43; Westwood, The Chronicle of the 'Compleat Angler' of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton: being a bibliographical record of its various phases and mutations, 1864, pp. 51-55; Westwood & Satchell, p. 228. Percy Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books, 1985.