THE BOOK OF THE GRAYLING: Being a description of the fish and the art of angling for him, as practiced chiefly in the Midlands and the North of England, By T.E. Pritt. First edition - Large Paper Issue.

1888 1st edition. Large paper issue. Large 4to (248 x 308mm). Ppviii,64 + 2pp ads. Colour frontispiece of a grayling, two colour plates of flies and tackle. Maroon cloth, blind-ruled borders and gilt quotation to upper board, spine titled in gilt.

The classic work on North Country grayling fishing. This is a copy of the Large Paper edition - considerably larger in format than the standard edition and with the frontispiece on a single sheet, not folded. The book is divided into two chapters: "All about Him" and "When, Where, and How to Catch Him". There are three colour plates : 1 of a grayling, 1 of flies and 1 of floats and the dorsal fin of a grayling plus 2 pages of advertisements. The author "sketches lightly the habits and habitat of the fish as they were accepted fifty years ago, following with some capital pages on autumn fishing with the wet fly, and giving dressings of fifteen flies selected by well-known grayling fishers of his time. The rest of the slender volume is mostly occupied by excellent descriptive notes on the popular North Country form of grayling fishing known as 'swimming the worm.' Pritt wrought - and wrote - well as a pioneer, but he only touched the fringe of what has grown into a big subject, and he had not entirely shaken off the hackles of traditional fallacy". (W. Carter Platts. Grayling Fishing. 1939).