Fishing.- Bainbridge (George Cole)

The Fly Fisher’s Guide, FIRST EDITION, hand-coloured engraved plates (numbered 1-8, including frontispiece) and 7 in b/w (unnumbered), woodcut on title page, Printed for the Author, by G. F. Harris’s Widow & Brothers, Liverpool, 1816; bound with Boccius (Gottlieb) A treatise on the management of fresh-water fish, with e view to making them a source of profit to landed proprietors, FIRST EDITION, old ownership entry on title (cut by de binder) John van Voorst, 1841, 19th century dark green morocco, cover and spine richly gilt, dentelles inside covers, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; signed inside front cover on the lower marge “Bound by W. Pratt”, probably William Pitt Pratt, a bookbindeer active in London from 1823 to 1838, several engravings, cutout from books and magazines, pasted by a previous (possibly XIXth century) owner, on pastedowns, on the half title of the second work, as head- and tail pieces, 4to.

***1^st work: it is the second angling book with hand-coloured engravings of natural flies (preceded only by George Scotcher's Fly-fisher's Legacy (1800) and is considered the main source for Ronalds' Fly-fisher's Entomology (1836). The plates depict the first coloured illustrations of salmon flies and 40 natural flies suitable for trout-fishing as well as the artificial flies to be used in their place. Not much is known about the author, but that he was a merchant in Liverpool born in Jamaica, who died in Scotland, and that he was a close friend of sir Walter Scott (J. G. Lockhart, ‘Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott’, V, 1837, p. 266; G. F. Russell Colt, History & Genealogy of the Colts of that ilk and Gartsherrie, and of the English & American branches of that family Edinburgh, 1887, p. 203); 2^nd work: the work gives instructions to restore the depleted stocks of fresh-water fishes, in order to obtain a constant supply of food. Especially devoted to salmon and trout, it discusses topics such as artificial spawning, breeding, and rearing of fish. In the appendix, 23 German recipes for cooking different kind of fresh-water fishes are given. Gottlieb Boccius was a merchant and inventor.