“NO SINGLE BOOK EVER HAD A MORE REVOLUTIONARY EFFECT ON THE ANGLING WORLD”: ONE OF 250 COPIES OF RONALDS’ FLY-FISHER’S ENTOMOLOGY, WITH 48 ACTUAL MOUNTED FLIES

RONALDS, Alfred. The Fly-Fisher’s Entomology, with Directions for Making the Artificial Representation of Each Fly; and a Few Observations and Instructions on Trout and Grayling Fishing… Illustrated with Engravings; and Forty-Eight Artificial Flies. Liverpool: Henry Young & Sons, 1913. Two volumes. Quarto, original publisher’s half green morocco gilt, green cloth boards with gilt fly onlay, top edges gilt, uncut.

Limited edition, number 5 of only 270 copies, signed by the publisher, with 48 actual tied flies in captioned mounts and illustrated with 21 full-page plates, including six beautiful photographs and 11 hand-colored engravings depicting flies and fish.

With his Fly-fisher’s Entomology, originally published in 1836, Ronalds became “the most significant figure after Cotton, whom he followed by a hundred and sixty years… It is safe to say that no single book ever had a more revolutionary effect on the angling world— that is, the actual practice of angling, as opposed to the recording of its annals— than The Fly-fisher’s Entomology.” Ronalds’ great innovation, providing hand-colored engravings of both the artificial and natural flies, made the Entomology an invaluable instruction manual for the amateur. “But more important than the drawings themselves, Ronalds did what hadn’t been done before, he threw a bridge, so to speak, between the practice of angling and the science of entomology. Without abandoning vernacular names, he linked them for the first time with their technical or scientific names… He gave fly fishing for the first time a systematic and scientific basis of distinguishing one fly from another” (Gingrich, 112, 113). Whereas the 1836 first edition was praised for its plates, which juxtaposed depictions of natural and artificial flies, this limited edition contains 48 flies mounted on thick card that correspond to the depictions of live flies in the color plates. Ronalds’ original plates have been remade for this edition and have been carefully painted from the last edition revised by the author. The flies have been specially dressed according to Ronalds’ instruction, and have been beautifully preserved. Also contains Ronalds’ prefaces to the first five editions. Thacher, 429. See Westwood & Satchell, 178; Sage, 169-70. Gift inscription.

Fine condition, with only lightest foxing to first and last leaves of Volume II.