Frontispiece from Fisherman's Luck, 1908

"That wise man and accomplished scholar, Sir Henry Wotton, the friend of Izaak Walton and ambassador of King James I to the republic of Venice, was accustomed to say that “he would rather live five May months than forty Decembers.”  The reason for this preference was no secret to those who knew him.  It had nothing to do with British or Venetian politics.  It was simply because December, with all its domestic joys, is practically a dead month in the angler’s calendar."

Frontispiece portrait fom Fishin' Jimmy, [1889]

Annie Trumbull Slosson was an American writer and entomologist.  She is considered an important short story author who was active during the American literary regionalism or “local color” movement of the late 19th century, and many of her works were first published in The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Bazaar.  

Frontispiece portrait of Washington Irving from The Works of Washington Irving,1840

"It is said that many an unlucky urchin is induced to run away from his family, and betake himself to a seafaring life, from reading the history of Robinson Crusoe; and I suspect that, in like manner, many of those worthy gentlemen, who are given to haunt the sides of pastoral streams with angle-rods in hand, may trace the origin of their passion to the seductive pages of honest Izaak Walton.  I recollect studying his “Complete Angler,” several years since, in company with a knot of friends in America, and moreover that we were all completely bitten with the angling mania.  It was early in the year; but as soon as the weather was auspicious, and that the spring began to melt into the verge of summer, we took rod in hand and sallied into the country, as stark mad as was ever Don Quixote from reading books of chivalry."   

Title page of The Works of Washington Irving, 1840

Lithograph of Trout of Silver Lake & Male Brook Trout, in The Cabinet of Natural History, 1830-1834

Thomas Doughty, born in Philadelphia, was a self-taught artist and landscape painter of mountain and river scenes of Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and the Hudson River Valley.  Doughty created this color lithograph on stone of the Pennsylvania, Trout of Silver Lake & Male Brook Trout, from a drawing by a Lady.     

Frontispiece of The Cabinet of Natural History, volume one, 1830-1834

Frontispiece of The Cabinet of Natural History, volume two, 1830-1834