The Compleat Angler + The Lives of Donne Wotton Hooker Herbert & Sanderson with Love and Truth & miscellaneous writings; Edited by Geoffrey Keynes, Illustrations by Thomas Poulton and Charles Sigrist

Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press, 1929. Limited Edition. Near fine. Thomas Poulton and Charles Sigrist. 8vo, 8 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches (210 x130 mm); pp. [6] x, 631 [5]. 6 copperplate engravings by Charles Sigrist (portraits of Walton, Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson) with tissue guards, but some offsetting to adjoining pages; 10 drawings of fish from in-line blocks, water-colored with stencils. Monotype Poliphilius on Pannekoek mould-made paper. All edges untrimmed, t.e.g. on the rough; bound in full natural morocco, headband and tailband, turn-ins with gilt fillets, marbled endpapers; "I.W." within gilt frame on front cover and gilt title on spine, raised bands; spine slightly wrinkled, but binding is firm and book is internally bright and clean. Housed in a marbled paper slipcase matching the endpapers, somewhat discolored and corners worn. Number 1577 of 1600 copies, in ink on the limitation page.

[Dreyfus 61]. The first edition of Izaak Walton's (1593 - 1683) complete writings, this volume contains Walton's most famous work, the Compleat Angler from the edition of 1668 - with the variants of 1676 as an appendix [Satchell p. 5] - in which Walton celebrates the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse, as well as the Lives; Love and Truth; and miscellaneous Poetry and Prose, as well as a Life of Walton and bibliographical notes, compiled by the editor. [John Dreyfus. A History of The Nonesuch Press. London: 1981; p. 212]

The NONESUCH PRESS was a private press founded in 1922 in London by Francis Meynell, his second wife Vera Mendel, and their mutual friend David Garnett who was a bookseller in Soho's Gerrard Street, in the basement of which the press began. It was unusual among private presses as it used a small hand press to design books, but had them printed by commercial printers, in order to produce book designs with the quality of a fine-press but available to a wider audience at lower prices. Meynell also wanted to demonstrate that "mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends." He believed that the production of exquisitely designed and produced books was not the preserve of the private press predicated upon the example established by William Morris's Kelmscott Press, which emphasized the primacy of the hand press printed book.