Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

2 volumes, 4to. Vol.1 with photogravure portrait frontispiece, 9 similar colour plates of flies, 18 colour charts, 16 mounted plates with tissue guards, black and white illustrations in text; vol.2 comprising "The Halford Dry Fly Patterns": 33 ACTUAL SPECIMENS OF DRY FLIES in 9 sunken mounts. (Some light spotting to plates.) Original half burgundy calf, spines in 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt-lettering in 2, others with centerpieces gilt, top edges gilt, others uncut (joints rubbed, uneven fading to covers, some staining to covers).

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, number 49 of 75 copies of the "edition de luxe," SIGNED BY HALFORD on the title-page. Halford remains renowned for the "enormous authority he commanded on his chosen subject... he occupied a position that few angling writers have ever held either before or since" (Herd, "Frederick M. Halford: The Myth and the Man", in: The American Fly Fisher, vol.28, no.1, 2002, p.17). Litchfield 73; Gee 93; Hampton 45; Kerridge 80.