QUILL GORDON. By John McDonald.

1972 1st US edition. 4to (205 x 259mm). Ppx,196,xv. Colour plates of flies, b/w illustrations. Cream cloth, spine and upper board titled in gilt.

"A fly-fisherman's feast of rare items from the author's streamside experiences and from his perusal of fascinating historical curiosities in angling lore". Essays on Berners, Walton, Cotton, Gordon, Bethune, early flies, steelhead, Yellowstone. Good colour plates of flies, including those of Berners. "Two fine artists, John Atherton and John Langley Howard, painted the trout and salmon flies shown on these pages from models supplied by the author and the noted fisheries biologist and angler, Dwight Webster. The paintings, widely regarded as modern classics of angling, have been unavailable for a long time." Colour plates of these paintings appear between pages 52 and 53, and are discussed in Chapter 10. Chapters include: Quill gordon; the origins of angling; Gordon and American fly-fishing; The Bergdorf Goodman fly; Green Drake eyes; Yellowstone waters; Armstrong's Creek; All the big ones got away; Canyon fishing for steelhead; Salmon flies; The first modern trout flies; Dame Juliana; the first known essay on sport fishing - The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle; The first known essay on fly-fishing - Part II of The Compleat Angler, by charles Cotton; An early essay on American fly-fishing, by George Washington Bethune.