This exhibition catalogue shows nearly 100 highlights of an extraordinary collection of rare books and print ephemera about angling. Featuring the books of a single collector, Bruce P. Dancik, who is an angler-collector in the mould of Roderick Haig-Brown, the catalogue includes titles that have contributed significantly to the development of angling as a sport and as a philosophy. Many books in the collection are titles of extreme rarity, often illustrated with woodcuts, copper or steel engravings, chromolithographs, and photoengravings. The curator, Justin Hanisch, has organized the publication into five sections: Manuals and Handbooks, Limited Editions, Angling as Adventure, Canadian Angling, and Scientific Angling.
Justin Hanisch is a biologist with the Government of Alberta and an avid collector of antiquarian books on the natural and social history of fish. In 2011, Hanisch won the second National Book Collecting Contest for Canadians under the age of 30.
"... you don't so much read this book as engage with its lively illustrations, photographs, and paintings, its pages and pages of gilt-edged book spines, titles, bindings, and dust jackets, its myriad typographies, its brilliantly colored and nuanced fly patterns, and its full-page reproductions of rare books in various angles of repose." -- Robert DeMott, Anglers' Club of New York Bulletin, 2020
Award of Excellence, UCDA Design Competition (2019) - Winner [United States]
