Walton, Isaac. Emerson, Peter Henry. The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation. Being a discourse of Rivers, Fish Ponds, Fish and Fishing, written by Issac Walton; and instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream by Charles Cotton. Edited and arranged by R.B. Marston. Two volumes. C, [u], 118; [2], 119-357, [1] pp. Illustrated with 54 original photogravures by Peter Henry Emerson and George Bankart and ca. 100 woodcuts throughout the text. Royal quarto., bound in deluxe contemporary full green crushed morocco, gilt-stamped initials of Walton on covers, t.e.g., others uncut. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1888. First Edition with the Emerson photographs. This publication is one of 250 Large Paper copies, signed by the publisher/editor R.B. Marston, and with the photographs printed on special India paper. This work, the 100th edition of the Compleat Angler, constitutes one of Emerson's most outstanding achievements (Victoria & Albert Museum, Golden Age of British Photography p.159).

Of the 54 photogravure illustrations, 27 are by Emerson, the pre-eminent figure in the naturalistic school of nineteenth-century photography, who took the original photographs along the Lea River in the Spring of 1887. Each of his plates is signed in the plate P.H. Emerson. Emerson was one of the first to express photography's unique powers as an independent and potentially great art form. Describing Emerson's photographic illustrations, Nancy Newhall writes: They cast a spell over the book; they live in your mind as you read. American by birth, Emerson became a doctor in England but gave up this career in order to devote himself to writing and photography, having been an amateur since 1882. In reaction against the stagnant artificialities of conventional salon photography, Emerson founded the 'school' of naturalistic photography. He published seven photographically illustrated books of landscapes in limited editions with platinotypes or photo-etchings (Gernsheim, History of Photography, pp. 456-60). In recent years P.H. Emerson works have been in great demand by photography collectors so many copies of this edition have been destroyed by the extraction of Emerson's photogravures (Coigney). A spectacular copy. Oliver 124. Horne 136. Coigney 139. Daval, Photography: History of an Art pp. 116-7, with reproductions.