WALTON, Izaak.

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The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, First edition. Walton's Angler was part of a wider understanding of the importance of environmental conservation that developed during this period. It is a celebration of the undisturbed English countryside marked by a keen appreciation of the harmony between living creatures and their habitats. In addition to being the most famous book on fishing, its advocation for methods of sustainable wildlife management makes it "one of the most important, formative environmental texts in the English language" (Swann, p. x).Each successive lifetime edition was heavily revised, until the fifth and last edition was so much expanded as to constitute almost a different text, "which gives to [the first] edition an importance other than that due its priority" (Pforzheimer). "A first Walton confers distinction upon its owner" (Westwood & Satchell).There are various typesetting errors in the first edition, although corrected and uncorrected sheets seem to have been issued indiscriminately, with little significance to the priority of issue. In the present copy "contention" (a mistake for "contentment") is uncorrected on page 245; the bass voice of Henry Lawes' "Angler's Song" (p. 217) is printed upside down, the idea being for two singers to stand opposite each other sharing the score (this idea is abandoned in other copies). "The Compleat Angler was conceived as dialogue between men travelling on foot who each represented a different re

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