The Compleat Angler; The Lives of Donne Wotton Hooker Herbert & Sanderson;
with Love and Truth & Miscellaneous Writings.
London: The Nonesuch Press, 1929
First collected edition, complete thus. Large Post octavo (the pages 21
x 13 cm, 8-1/4 x 5-1/8 in.). Ten line-block text illustrations of fish by
Thomas L. Poulton (all delicately color-stenciled at the Curwen Press),
six copper-plate portrait engravings (printed by A. Alexander & Son)
by Charles Sigrist, two large text illustrations by Poulton in red of Donne’s
seals, Poulton’s Nonesuch device on title and other text decorations.
No. 471 of 1,600 numbered copies, printed in Monotype Poliphilus on Pannekoek
mold-made laid paper by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. Full undyed natural
morocco, spine in six compartments with raised bands and gilt title (“The
Compleat Walton”), gilt initials “I.W.” within gilt tooled
oval on front cover, gilt-ruled dentelles, marbled endpapers in maroon,
blue and orange nonpareil pattern (reproducing a paper in Keynes’s
library), top edges rough trimmed and gilt in the rough, others uncut; publisher’s
slipcase in matching marbled paper. Collates [4 ll.], 1 l. (half-title),
1 l. (frontispiece portrait verso), 1 l. (title), 1 l. (colophon), pp. vii-x
(contents), 1 l. (fly-title), pp. 3-198 (The Compleat Angler),
1 l. (fly-title), pp. 201-536 (The Lives), 1 l. (fly-title), pp.
539-571 (Love and Truth), [1 p.], 1 l. (fly-title), pp.575-609
(Miscellaneous Writings), [1 p.], 1 l. (fly-title), 613-631 (Keynes’s
Life and Bibliographical Notes), [p. 632] (printer’s statement), [3
ll.], plus 6 ll. engraved portraits printed versos only (the five portraits
in The Lives with tissue guards). Spine slightly sunned, slight
to negligible offsetting of engraved portraits onto facing pages, else fine,
apparently unread, in a very good, moderately sunned slipcase with minor
edgewear. “The [present] new edition, which may be fitly nicknamed
The Compleat Walton, should tend to correct the current misdirection
of Waltoniculture. It shows him as the literary artist painting nature and
the countryside, touching in the characteristics of his friends, writing
occasional verse, or conducting ecclesiastical polemics, with equal grace
and facility.” (Keynes, quoted in Dreyfus, p. 212.) Francis Meynell,
teaming with Tom Poulton, put heroic effort into the elegant design of this
volume. Dreyfus (p. 212) quotes Meynell as recalling that the 27th proof
of the title “seems to be almost right,” and cites the printer,
William Maxwell, as remembering 37 revisions (four are reproduced at Dreyfus,
p. 60). With the engraved bookplate of Kenneth Garth Huston (1926-1987),
discerning collector of Geoffrey Keynes material. Dreyfus 61.
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Price: $350
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