A SUMMER ON THE TEST. By the Right Honourable John Waller Hills. Modern Fishing Classics series.

(1924) 1983 6th edition. Small 8vo paperback (128 x 197mm). Pp271. B/w plates and illustrations by Norman Wilkinson. Reprinted from the 2nd edition (1930).

In this classic of chalk-stream fishing, Hills describes the River Test in its heyday. First published in 1924 it remained in print for more than thirty years, and with good reason. No author has surpassed this description of classic chalkstream fishing, and very few authors knew half as much about the history of their sport as J.W. Hills. Summer on the Test makes rather painful reading in some respects. Of all the rivers which have been subject to decline and deterioration, the Test must rank near the top. In the 1920s, the river ran crystal clear through the buttercup meadows and brown trout were there in profusion. Now, those days seem impossible to recover. This book enables us to make an estimate of what it was once like, and what we have lost. This paperback edition is based on the most definitive (second) edition with revisions and seven additional chapters plus the fine and evocative etchings of Norman Wilkinson R.I.