Got a note from oddball Jim Westergard reporting a recent flood of online interest in The Intruder, which features his wood engravings published by Deep Wood Press in 2012. My question is, why is this the first time I'm hearing about it at all?
The book, by Robert Traver, falls in the angling category (which probably has a larger audience than books on books by a factor of ten). Jim's note made me realize that, despite having no interest in fishing, I have a number of books on the subject...
Alison's Fishing Birds, the first piece of printing by Jim Rimmer I got.
A 1997 reprint of Pool & Rapid, published by the (Roderick) Haig Brown Fly Fishing Association on Vancouver Island. I got this because it was designed Bev Leech and is one of the last letterpress books printed at Morriss Printing. But haven't actually, like, read it. But you can if you want to: the association still has copies & they're available at half the issue price!
And the jewel in the fishy crown, selections from the diary of Roderick Haig-Brow, published in five volumes by Beaverdam Press in 1992. I wrote about this before. Stunning piece of work.
There are lots of other stunning examples of fine press publishing that, despite being about fishing, I would add to the collection if the right copy came along. The first two publications from D. R. Wakefield's Chevington Press were about trout. His work is fantastic. One guy doing everything, intaglio and letterpress combined.
Alan James Robinson did at least two books about angling. I think it had a fly incorporated to the binding or box. Others have done that as well. Don't like it.
Coincidentally, one of the titles in the selected bibliography of publisher Kevin Begos Jr included at the back of About Agrippa is an angling title: In Praise of Trout - & Also Me. (As if the trout wasn't enough, we get the personal history larded on; thanx Oprah.) I suspect this was a commission book for Begos...
A bookseller once tried very hard to convince me to buy a copy of the Ashendene Treatyse of Fysshynge printed on vellum. It was priced to sell, but I kept saying, I just don't are about the topic, especially in olde englishe.
Anyway, despite the fishiness of it, I'm sure Jim's new book is very kool.
Posts
