The Compleat Angler, Or The Contemplative Man's Recreation

This is of course a book on fishing but it is also a window in to seventeenth-century country life with folklore. Most of the book centres around a journey, undertaken by the books main characters, it is perhaps the most successful fishing trip of all time! Much of the advice which passes from master to pupil is strangely relevant 350 years later. The edition is complete in one volume & it contains 'The Compleat Angler' from the edition of 1668, with the variants of 1676 as an appendix the ' Lives, Love & Truth' and miscellaneous Poetry & Prose. The editor supplies a Life of Walton & bibliographical notes. With illustrations. /// This leather-bound 4th edition from this publishing house & its a hardback in good condition-the leather to the cover is a little rubbed & the front cover is beginning to crack. (418 pages & 60 pages of introduction & 12 pages of illustrations). The Compleat Angler was first published in 1653, but Walton continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. The last 40 years of his long life seem to have been spent in ideal leisure, visiting eminent clergymen and others who enjoyed fishing, compiling the biographies of congenial spirits, and collecting for the enlargement of his famous treatise.…