A TREATYSE OF FYSSHYNGE WYTH AN ANGLE

Chelsea: The Ashendene Press, 1903. One of 150 copies, printed in 'Subiaco' type, with one initial in red, on Japanese paper. With the famous woodcut frontispiece of a man fishing and decorations ‘after the text of Wynkyn de Worde in 'The Boke of St. Alban's empynted at Westmester in the yere of thyncarnacion of our Lorde mcccclxxxxvi (1496’ by St. John Hornby and Meysey Turton”. Fine textual illustrations throughout. 8vo, bound in the original full limp vellum. 48 pp. An especially fine copy, beautifully preserved. A BEAUTIFUL COPY OF ONE OF THE MOST PLEASING BOOKS PRINTED AT THE PRESS. This work reprints in “exact” facsimile the first printing of any book on fishing ever printed in England. The interest of the "Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle" lies not only in its priority in the field of fishing literature, but also because it has served as a literary quarry to many succeeding writers on fishing, and it also established a high moral value for the craft of fishing and is responsible for "having assigned in popular estimation to the angler his meditative and gentle nature".
The Renaissance designed plates are famous for showing the first illustration of a person fishing with hook and line, and for the additional cuts throughout the text depicting hooks, all manners of fishing tools, types of lines for floating or sinking, and various and sundry other fishing devices.
Juliana Berners (or Barnes or Bernes) (b. 15th century), English writer on heraldry, hawking and hunting, is said to have been prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St Albans. Her book on fishing was the first known book on fishing by a woman.
She was probably brought up at court and, after she adopted the religious life, she still retained her love of hawking, hunting and fishing, and her passion for field sports. She is the supposed author of the work generally known as the Boke of St Albans, of which the first and rarest edition was printed in 1486 by an unknown schoolmaster at St Albans. The only clue to the authorship of the Treatise, and the documentary evidence of her, is an attribution at the end of the original 1496 book which reads “Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntying.” Her name was changed by Wynkyn de Worde to “Dame Julyans Bernes.”