THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF ENGLISH FISH TAXIDERMISTS. By Barry Williams. Standard limited edition.

2020 1st edition. Large heavy 4to (222 x 287mm). Pp632. Illustrated with over 950 colour photographs, including portraits, documents, record pike and other fish, pictorial end-papers. Dark blue boards, spine titled in gilt. Edition limited to 1000 copies, numbered (1-1000) and signed by the author.

English fish taxidermy and the collecting of cased stuffed fish has a long and fascinating history. Professional taxidermist and restorer Barry Williams begins with the story of the families of East End taxidermists who preserved the best of the catches of the London angling associations, the Piscatorial Society, the Flyfishers' Club, and many individual anglers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research takes him around the country in search of work by famous and less well-known taxidermists, and includes their business histories, details of much of their surviving work, and quite a lot about their often surprising personal lives. Barry gives detailed descriptions of the taxidermists' individual styles and also the characteristics by which their cases and fish can be identified. He takes pains to identify many individual fish and their captors, including much new information on angling controversies such as those surrounding some of the large pike claimed by well-known anglers such as Alfred Jardine and Dennis Pye. Illustrated with over 950 photographs, including portraits, documents, record pike and other fish, this book is an authoritative reference for collectors of cased fish and taxidermy, as well as being of great interest to fishermen and angling historians. There is also a de luxe edition, limited to 60 copies, at GBP 395.00.