Fly-fishing: A Book of Words

Fly-fishing has one of the longest recorded histories of any pastime, and one of the most extensive literatures. Within that written history is a unique and well-developed lexicon, consisting not only of words concerned with fish (grilse, kelt, mort) and fishing techniques (dapping, dibbling, trolling), but also of terms which reflect the way fly-fishermen have spoken and thought about the discoveries and landscapes inherited by rod and line. Included here, therefore, are words about lakes, lochs and rivers, about flies and fly-life, and about technical controversies and inventions. there is also generous illustrative quotation from the pastime's magnificent literature, from the fifteenth century 'Treatise of Fishing with an Angle' to Walton, Cotton, Venables, Nobbes, Davy, Stewart, Grey, Halford, Skues and others, down to the present day. Important and unusual dialect words, and phrases which have passed from specialist use into wider currency, are also represented. The emphasis throughout is on the relationship between fly-fishing's language and fly-fishing's history. From 'ant' to 'wet-fly', from 'action' to 'whitling', this lexicon offers many curiosities and many rewards.

About the Author :
Chris McCully, despite being charming, talented, and a recovering alcoholic, is still Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester University. He currently lives in Amsterdam, and is to re-marry in June 2001. There is no causal relationship between these surprising facts. Now, in his mid-40's, and wearing the same vaguely stained cocktail jacket, he is trying to persuade the world of the value of the quieter virtues (listening, reading, music, gardening, and fly-fishing, though not necessarily in that order). The world, as expected, largely ignores this persuasion. McCully's intellectual interests are beginning to range even more widely, from Old English poetry and prose to the formal rigours of Optimality Theory; from Dante through Erasmus to Heidegger. In short, he is what university appointments committees scorn as 'a generalist'. Nevertheless, his work, both poetry and prose, continues to win awards, and despite his dubious taste in fishing-hats and puns, he shows no signs yet of going away. His works on phonological theory, English stress, Old English, and the history of the English language have been issued by, or are forthcoming from, Cambridge University Press, who also produced his co-edited text English Historical Metrics (1996). In 1993 he won the Caedmon Prize for `poetry in Old English'. He edited the critical anthology The Poet's Voice and Craft (Carcanet, 1994). His other major interest is represented in Fly-Fishing: a Book of words (Carcanet, 1994).