Books

First American trade edition. Quarto (9 7/16 x 7 3/16 inches; 239 x 183 mm.). Collating 223, (1). Publishers dark blue ribbed cloth over boards, front cover and spine decoratively stamped in gilt. Pictorial endpapers, top edge gilt. Twelve color plates, including frontispiece, with captioned tissue guards. Twenty-five black and white illustrations. Title printed in green and black. 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. Izaak Walton's The Compleate Angeler (1653) is perhaps the quintessential pastoral work on fishing: Structured as a dialogue between a fisherman, huntsman, and fowler, the book is a celebration of the natural world and the thrills of fishing as a pastime. Here the text is visualized with Arthur Rackham's unparalleled illustrations, making it a delight for fishing enthusiasts and collectors alike. Despite Rackham s illness and personal struggles during the project, it was seen as an opportunity to revitalize his career. "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 (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrators of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.