Descrizione

The First John Major Edition. Profusely illustrated with 52 textual engravings including head- and tail-pieces, portraits, views etc. and 11 full-page copperplate engravings, collated complete. 8vo, handsomely bound by Mackenzie in full polished calf, the spine with gilt ruled raised bands separating the compartments, compartments fully gilt with elaborate gilt tooling filling the compartment, two compartments lettered in blind from old labels, the covers with gilt fillet rules at the borders, central gilt ornament to the center of the upper cover, turnovers gilt rolled, all edges marbled, marbled end-leaves. xviii, 503, [1] pp. A very good and handsome copy, some light age or evidence of shelving to the extremities, original title labels lost, lettering now in blind, some mellowing or evidence of age to the text-block, otherwise a clean and strong and well preserved copy.

Edizione: a well preserved and handsome copy, illustrated throughout. includes walton’s last published major work and the last of his series of “lives” which along with sanderson included donne, hooker, herbert and wotton. walton’s notoriety as author of the compleat angler, (one of the most famous books in the language and one of the best sporting and “how to” books of all time) often overshadows the memory of these biographies, the last three of which were written when walton was quite elderly. in these works walton expresses a unique view of time as a perceptual framework and a transient state of normal life. he stresses that these important figures must be viewed within their own and personal relationship to time, and to the times in which they lived. in doing so he evolved the art of writing “lives” to something more closely relative to modern biographical scholarship then can be seen in the writings of his contemporaries.