The Literary Fly Fisher

Last week, I took my students to the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections Department of our university libraries. Washington State University’s MASC holds a huge collection of angling texts, many of which were donated by alumni Joan and Vernon Gallup. MASC Department Head Trevor James Bond gave an informative and enjoyable overview of the collection to the students. I urge anyone interested in working with these texts, or even visiting them for the mere pleasure of doing so, to contact him. And if you do visit, let’s wet a line.

Various editions of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. First editions (1653) in the foreground. Vellum bound edition, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1931), in right background.

First Edition of The Compleat Angler

William Blacker’s Catechism of Fly Making, Angling, and Dying (1843).

The actual flies tipped into Blacker’s text. This copy includes both trout and salmon flies.

Bond. Trevor James Bond. Seriously, this guy knows a lot more about security than Daniel Craig does.

This entry was posted on October 10, 2015 at 11:36 AM 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.