Bowlker's Art of Angling - Charles Bowlker

1826 - Procter &, Ludlow / London - Ninth Edition
An enlarged edition of one of the best early instructional works on fly-fishing and making artificial flies, first published Circa 1747 by the author's father Richard. Illustrated with a hand-coloured copper-engraved frontispiece showing 30 flies and with wood block vignettes throughout the text.

‘The
Art of Angling was the standard textbook of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and ran to at least a dozen editions. A slim volume written in the didactic style that is typical of early fishing manuals.

Continuing the grand tradition of early fishing texts,
The Art ranges widely for such a compact volume and deals with almost every type of fishing - where fly fishing is concerned, there is a great deal on choice of tackle, but relatively little on tactics.

Much of Bowlker's advice has its roots in the seventeenth century and some of his patterns are derived from the
Treatyse on Fishing with an Angle, an important milestone in the literature.’ - Dr. Andrew Herd - A FlyFishing History. 
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Price HK$ 2,500



The Salmon Rivers and Lochs of Scotland - William Leadbetter Calderwood

1909 - Edward Arnold, London - First Edition
A finely bound example of this early twentieth century classic and comprehensive work on salmon fishing, with detailed descriptions and personal views of each Salmon river and loch, supported with illustrations throughout including four colour plates, thirty-four photographic plates and eighteen full page maps with colour outline.

Calderwood was one of the first to note the danger of overfishing and the importance of Salmon conservation, and what did and did not affect the run of Salmon. He was also the first to show that Salmon could be aged by growth rings on their scales.
 
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Price HK$ 5,400



The Borders and Beyond - Abel Chapman

1924 - Gurney and Jackson, London - First Edition
A bright copy of this informative work of field exploration and natural history in Northumberland and the Anglo-Scottish borderlands.

Hunter-naturalist Chapman includes chapters on the British red grouse, the wildfowl of the north east coast, a search for the ‘moorland nymph’, salmonology, seagulls, woodcocks and herons, ravens, and the otter, together with a commentary on ‘modern zoology’, and extensive particulars on the migrations and plumage-phases in certain waders, to which he gave the name ‘Globe-Spanners’.

Profusely illustrated throughout with seventeen wonderful colour illustrations (on fourteen plates) by W.H. Riddell, twenty one black and white plates, two folding maps, and 170 sketches by the author.
 
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Price HK$ 1,000



1894 - Chapman and Hall, London - First Edition
A large and beautifully bound work Illustrated with eleven full page plates by Scottish wildlife artist Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935).

Augustus Grimble presents here his entertaining recollections and views on fishing and shooting in the highlands of Scotland.

Grimble was the first to call for a close time to the Salmon fishing season in Scotland after witnessing the alarming drop in catch, and rise in netting technology and quantity, as well as highlighting the threats of industrial sewage polluting the rivers and streams near cities.
 
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Price HK$ 6,000



The Poetry of Sport - Hedley Peek (editor)

1896 - Longmans, London and Bombay - First Edition
‘Haste, ranger, to the Athol mountains blue! Unleash the hounds, and let the bugles sing! The thousand traces in the morning dew, the bounding deer,the black-cock on the wing, bespeak the rout of Scotland’s gallant king...from cairn of Bruar to the dark Glen-Morre, the forest’s in a howl, and all is wild uproar!’

A handsomely bound edition, with a distinctly Glaswegian accent, being bound in Glasgow and owned by the renowned medical Professor David Fyfe Anderson.

Containing a chapter on classical allusions to sport by Andrew Lang, and a lively preface to the Badminton Library by A.E.T Watson. Accompanied with illustrations by artists A. Thorburn, Lucien Davis, and C.E Brock, among others, this is a lovely compilation of poetry on the subject of sport for young men in the late eighteen-hundreds, primarily depicting activities such as fishing, hunting, and shooting.
 
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Price HK$ 3,000



1861 - Henry G. Bohn, London - The Second Jesse Edition
A finely bound copy of one of the most profusely illustrated editions, the second to be edited by Edward Jesse. According to Oliver, ‘this edition has been criticized as having been somewhat too fully annotated and illustrated, but the illustrations, in our opinion, add as much to the charm of the book, as the notes do to its interest’.

‘Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries,
" Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ";
and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling
.’

The most enduring distinction of the
Complete Angler is the one cast off by its subtitle The Contemplative Man's Recreation with its graceful evocations of a life free from hurly-burly in the company of friends intent on physical and moral sustenance. The range of perspectives that Walton brings to bear on his rural descriptions embrace literature, poetry, music and anecdote. 
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Price HK$ 9,500



The Complete Angler or Contemplative Man's Recreation, Being a Discourse on Rivers, Fish-ponds, Fish, and Fishing - Izaak Walton, Charles Cotton, Sir John Hawkins, J. E. Harting

1893 - Samuel Bagster and Sons, London - The Harting Edition. Tercentenary Edition. No. 300 of 350 copies.
‘Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries,
" Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ";
and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling
.’

A finely bound two volume set of the Harting Edition. With 54 illustrations and additional vignettes, and embellishments after John Linnell, G. E. Lodge, Huysman, Alexander, Wale, Samuel, and Percy Thomas, engraved by Audinet, Hayter, and Greig.

‘Edited from a Naturalist point of view’ by J. E. Harting, librarian of the Linnaen Society of London. The date of the founding of the Bagster publishing house was April 19,1794, and this profusely illustrated edition, limited to 350 numbered copies, was partly intended to commemorate the event. Included is an abridgement of the Lives of the Authors by Sir John Hawkins

It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of the heart. There are many choice old verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it’ - Charles Lamb in his letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The most enduring distinction of the
Complete Angler is the one cast off by its subtitle The Contemplative Man's Recreation with its graceful evocations of a life free from hurly-burly in the company of friends intent on physical and moral sustenance. The range of perspectives that Walton brings to bear on his rural descriptions embrace literature, poetry, music and anecdote. 
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Price HK$ 10,000



The Life of Izaak Walton; including Notices of his Contemporaries - Thomas Zouch

1826 - Thomas Gosden, London - First Gosden Edition
A charmingly bound Gosden edition of Zouch’s ‘Life of Izaak Walton’, first published in 1790, and later illustrated here with eighteen engraved plates which where also used for Thomas Gosden’s 1822 edition of the ‘Compleat Angler’. 
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Price HK$ 2,000