Getting The Lovejoys

[den]

It happened again. I was wandering through my favourite 2nd hand place when I found myself in front of the crap used book shelf. I idly pulled a small, coverless book from the middle of the shelf and almost fell over. I was holding a near perfect facsimile of Izaak Walton's "The Compeat Angler, or The Contemplative Man's Recreation."

The publisher went to a great deal of trouble recreating the book that was published in 1653. They used a photographic process to copy the typeface and the wonderful woodcuts, and cut the pages to all odd sizes so they're never quite the same size. They even turned page 217 upside down as it was in the original. This was done (said Mr Walton) so that two anglers could stand facing each other with the book between them and read the music for the Angler's song that was there "for two voyces, Treble and baffe"

$1.00. I am insanely happy. It would be nice to have the covers, but you can't expect much for $1.00.

Comments

[ldy.livejournal.com]

WOW! Excellent find!! :D

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

Is there anything in that book about Troute?:D That *is*
really neat thing to find. Why can't I find something like
that? I haven't fished for trout in ages.........

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Mr Walton has much to fay about Trout here, dere Scholar.

http://www.battyden.net/trout1.jpg
http://www.battyden.net/trout2.jpg
http://www.battyden.net/trout3.jpg

scans from the book.

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

Dead Mice? Cloth?! So they were using easier bogus lures back then! The most worthless bait in the universe are brown colored fake salmon eggs called Trout Abouts. The book was obviously
written before the advent of fly dishing. My dad really got into tying his own flies and spent hours crouching over a vice apparatus in the basement creating them. I got better hits on his fake mosquitos than the commercial ones. I should ask him to make me a helgremite for christmas sometime:D.