A HISTORY OF THE FENS: BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR SWAMPS, MERES, MEN, SPORTS, DUCK DECOYS, DRAINAGE, RIOTS, FLOODS, LEGENDS, FISH, AND FOWL. By J. Wentworth Day.

1954 1st edition. 8vo (135 x 202mm). Pp272. B/w photograph plates, illustrations, foreword by the Duke of Manchester. Red cloth.

Wentworth Day spent sixteen years thinking about this book and collecting material, before setting it down on paper over six weeks at the beginning of 1953". In this book I have tried to give a 'human' History of the Fens. I have avoided long and tedious excursions into geology, botany, entomology, pre-history, ecclesiastical history, and drainage. Those well-trodden paths need few new signposts. I have concentrated instead on the lives and character of the Fen people, and have tried to recreate pictures of the old and savage Fen, its meres and swamps, with the wings of wildfowl like thunder in the dawn, its fowlers and fishermen, as it was in its ancient glory.. ..I have tried, in these pages, to convey some of the magic and the beauty of the Fens, the blunt character of its outspoken people, something of the charm of birds and lure of fish, the majesty of immense sunsets and sea-born dawns, and the mystery of that old Fen, a sullen place of fascination and of horror.. ..Finally, I owe a bow of thanks across the grave to Lord Orford, whose rare, privately printed 'Journal' I give almost in extenso".