I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
The Compleat Angler
London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1926. Item #05163
With Two Magnificent Original Watercolor Paintings On Calf Doublures
By Helen Haywood
Robert Rivière's Granddaughter
HAYWOOD, Helen R., artist. WALTON, Izaac and Charles Cotton. The Compleat Angler. Edited by Richard Le Gallienne. Illustrations by Edmund H. New. London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, [1926].
Specially bound with two superb original watercolor paintings on both of the calf doublures
by Helen R. Haywood.
Octavo (7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in; 181 x 113 mm). lxxxix, [4], 454, [14 as Anglers' Calendar] pp. Black and white illustrations throughout, some full-page. Initials and vignettes. Inserted limitation leaf "With Water/Colour Drawings/on/Calf Doublures/by/[signed] Helen R. Haywood."
Bound by Rivière & Son c. 1926, stamp-signed in gilt on front turn-in. Full forest green crushed morocco, covers with gilt double-rule border, spine with five raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments. Double gilt-ruled board edges, decorative gilt ruled turn-ins, enclosing calf doublures with full, angling-themed original watercolor paintings. Green moire silk free endpapers, all edges gilt. A very fine and unique copy. Housed in a felt-lined green cloth clamshell case, spine with leather label, lettered in gilt.
The two exquisite original watercolors on calf elegantly reproduce at the front "Come, now bait your hook again, and lay it into the water, for it rains again" (Compleat Angler, Fourth Day) and at the rear "Marry, God requite you, sir, and we'll eat it cheerfully" (Compleat Angler, Third Day).
Helen R. Haywood (1908-1995), English painter and children's book illustrator Helen R[iviere]. Haywood was the granddaughter Robert Riviere, founder of the great bindery which executed this lovely binding. Her mother, Mabel, was Riviere's ninth and last child. She was born in England in 1908 but was taken as a child to Chile, where her father, an engineer, worked on the trans-Andean railway. She remained in Chile until she was approximately 15 years old. Her experiences were recounted in an unpublished novel,"Childhood in Chile." Miss Haywood was a keen student of science and an amateur naturalist and anthropologist. Many of the books she illustrated for the publisher Hutchinson & Co., London, were keenly observed and scrupulously accurate depictions of plants, birds and animals. When commissioned to do illustrations for a children's book on dinosaurs, her research into the skin colors she subsequently chose for her dinosaur illustrations was cited by the Royal Academy of Sciences. Haywood was also a practitioner of the art of fore-edge painting. She became acquainted with the art form through an uncle who was associated with the Bayntun-Riviere Bindery of Bath. She did several fore-edge and double fore-edge paintings on commission every year from the 1930s to the 1970s for Inman's Books, an antiquarian book dealer in New York City. She died in Bournemouth, England in 1995.
Provenance: Purchased by David Brass Rare Books from John & Judith Head (May 2012); sold to Randal Moscovitz (December 2012).
Price: $8,500.00