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 Rivière. Percy Muir describes this edition 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" (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". Provenance: originally in the collection of Arthur Dalrymple (d. 1868), with his armorial bookplate on the front pastedowns. Dalrymple was a solicitor of Norwich, clerk of the peace from 1856, and a member of the Society of Antiquaries; he owned a collection of Norwich portraits. This copy was subsequently owned by Rupert Sackville Gwynne (1873-1924), a British politician, with his bookplates below Darlymple's; later in the library of Noel B. Spurway (c.1888-1961), a Leicester-based archaeology collector, with his attractively designed bookplate on the front free endpapers. Two volumes, quarto (268 x 180 mm). Mid 19th-century green morocco by Rivière, spines with gilt-ruled raised bands, gilt lettering and ornaments in compartments, covers framed in blind and in gilt, inner frame with gilt fleurons at corners, oval centrepieces, board edges and turn-ins ruled in gilt, marbled endpapers, edges gilt. With 61 engraved plates and vignettes including frontispiece, of which 60 are in double state (regular and india paper), with tissue guards; title pages printed in red and black. Spines faded, small split to front joint of vol. II, but firm, a little foxing to plates and occasionally to contents, faint offsetting from engravings, otherwise bright and clean. A very good set. Horne, Compleat Angler, 43; Keynes, p. 94; 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. 51-5; Westwood & Satchell, p. 228. Percy Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books, 1985.