Description
Christie's South Kensington, Published 1999. Wraps, 61, [7] pp.; 27 cm; illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Glossy black wrappers, color plate reproduced on front and rear, yellow spine panel lettered in black. Mild shelf wear with bumping to edges and scattered surface scuffs to covers. Staple bound, binding tight. Pages clean. Otherwise unmarked. Sale of the angling library formed by Georges-Albert Petit (1842-1920), President of the Cour des Comptes, who took up fly fishing at forty-two and built a library of more than 2,200 volumes running from the 15th to the 20th century. Petit's collection was bought en bloc after his death by Jacques, 6th Baron de Neuflize (1883-1953), Regent of the Banque de France and president of the Casting Club de France, and dispersed by his descendants nearly eighty years later. 231 lots in three sections, Continental Books, English Books, and Prints, described with references to Bosgoed, Brunet, Hampton, Hills, Nissen, Schwerdt, Thiebaud, Robb, Westwood and Satchell, and Petit's own 1921 library catalogue, with estimates in pounds and euros. Several lots record Petit's dealings with Frederic Halford: Dry-Fly Entomology, number 1 of 100 copies de luxe signed by Halford with Petit first on the subscribers' list; Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice, number 51 of 100 large paper copies signed by Halford, with a two-page letter from Halford to Petit dated 30 November 1894; and Modern Development of the Dry Fly with the invoice made out to Petit. Other lots include Crescentiis, Weydtwergk, 1531; Belon, 1555; Bossuet, 1558; Fortin de Grandmont, Les ruses innocentes, 1660; Albin and North, A Treatise on Fish and Fish-Ponds, with 18 hand-colored plates; Ronalds, The Fly-fisher's Entomology, in the 1836 first edition and the 1913 eleventh de luxe edition with mounted flies; Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, first edition, 1906; and oban woodblock prints by Hiroshige, Hokusai and Kuniyoshi with lithographs by Daumier. Front cover reproduces the hand-colored frontispiece to lot 144, Huish's The Improved British Angler, 1838; rear cover reproduces lot 82, the Aldam Quaint Treatise on Flies and Fly Making, 1876.