Fisher, P[aul]. Pseudo., William H. Chatto
The Angler's Souvenir
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Seller ID: 1166 London: Tilt, 1835. First edition (x, 193), 16.5 cm. The author is 'assisted by several eminent Piscatory Characters with illustrations by Beckwith & Topham' who have set the pages within decorative wood-engraved frames illustrative of various angling themes and engraved on copperplate 31 full-page illustrations of angling scenes and paraphrenalia. In original brown publisher's cloth with impressed decoration, gilt titles, t.e.g.; skilfully rebacked preserving the spine. Occasional spotting, largely due to pressed botanical specimens (now removed) perhaps collected in lulls between bites. As 'Stephen Oliver', William Andrew Chatto (1799�1864) "published Scenes and Recollections of Fly-Fishing in Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland (1834), and Rambles in Northumberland and on the Scottish Border (1835). Chatto was also something of an expert on wood-engraving. His Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (1839) with 300 illustrations by John Jackson was particularly influential, and ran to two further editions, in 1861 and 1877. In this vein he also produced The History and Art of Wood Engraving (1848), and Gems of Wood Engraving from the 'Illustrated London News' (1848). Chatto's more humorous publications included A Paper: of Tobacco (1839) under the pseudonym Joseph Fume with illustrations by H. K. Browne (Phiz), and the popular Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards" (ODNB). Later editions of the Souvenir were published in 1845 and 1847 by W. H. Bohn (Westwood, 93). Chatto wrote easy, fluent sentences whose rhythms suggest the waters in which he had dunked a worm or floated a fly. At one place, he notes that the boys at Eaton were apt to learn the 'pleasing art' of angling from the example set years before by a provost of the College, Sir Henry Wotten, an intimate of Walton, and says, "A good example once set, in a place of education, long continues to be followed; and one generation emulates another, in the cultivation of a science or art which has taken deep root in an unversiity or college, under the care of those whose memory is honored. Oxford produces men upon whom the Muses smile, and whose minds are imbued with the poetry and eloquence of Greece and Rome; and Cambridge sends forth her sons skilful to expound the problems of Euclid and Archimedes, to analyse the complicated relations of numbers and curves, to observe the revolutions of the planets, and calculate the distance of the stars." So, a book to collect and having been collected, to read. Not the prettiest copy, perhaps, but skilfully repaired and entirely presentable. Priced accordingly. Price: $340.00
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