The Literary Fly Fisher

This picture accompanies Washington Irving’s “The Angler.” Drawn by California artist Julian Rix, best known for his landscape paintings, it is titled “To Haunt the Sides of Pastoral Streams, With Angle Rods in Hand.” I came across it in Volume One of the The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Van Tassel Edition, published by Putnam in 1899 (the first, collected version of The Sketch Book appeared in 1820).

The illustration suits Irving’s story well. And it pays tribute to the values expressed by Walton in The Compleat Angler, which was Irving’s intention in writing “The Angler” (moreover, the drawing is well titled, since it was published in the same volume that included “The Legend of Sleepy Hallow”). If you have not browsed through a complete, two volume version of The Sketch Book, I recommend you look at this one, both for the writing and for the illustrations.

This entry was posted on March 2, 2015 at 11:52 PM and is filed under Environmental Literature, Fly Fishing Literature, The Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.