MY SPORTING LIFE. By John Waller Hills. First edition.

1936 1st edition. 8vo (142 x 222mm). Pp298. Not illustrated. Blue cloth, spine titled in gilt.

Chalk-stream trout fishing, Cumbrian salmon and trout, Scottish deer stalking. The tale Hills tells of his own education on Test, Itchen, Kennet, and Driffield Beck, and of his broad-minded resolution of North and South Country styles provides a valuable part of angling history. He also describes salmon fishing on the Dee, the Spey, and in Norway, and recollects hunting expeditions in places as diverse as Canada and Uruguay and even parts of the USA. But perhaps the most interesting part of the book contains extracts from his angling diaries. Hills' method was not the terse 'game book' form - he adopted the more ambitious way of writing a reasoned and self-critical account of each day's fishing. Raw material of this sort is extremely uncommon in the literature of fishing, and adds enormously to the interest of this book.