Pêche

1823 · 21796 — John Major Fleet-Street adjoining Serjeant's-Inn 1823. 8vo. First Major Edition with copper-engraved portrait frontispiece engraved title-vignette 13 fine copper-engraved plates including 2 of music scores and 77 woodcut illustrations and decorations in the text some light offsetting from frontispiece to title some very light and inoffensive spotting to some margins neat later nineteenth century inscription on blank preliminary; most attractively bound in mid-nineteenth full speckled brown calf boards with decorative gilt frame border back with five raised bands tooled in gilt second compartment with black leather label framed and lettered in gilt all other compartments elaborately ruled and tooled in gilt marbled edges gilt doublures marbled endpapers joints lightly rubbed short splits in joints at head and tail but binding wholly sound an attractive copy of a perennial classic in period binding. The first Major edition is based on the fifth edition of 1676 the last published during Walton's lifetime and printed by Nicol at the Shakespeare Press. Major's typically extensive notes occupy pp.395-406. The plates are engraved by Cook and Pye from the old drawings by Wale which had been 'greatly heightened in the effect by the pencil of Mr. Frederick Nash' W&S. Coigny 23; Oliver 23; Slater p.28; Westwood & Satchell p.225. John Major, Fleet-Street, adjoining Serjeant's-Inn, hardcover