THE ESSENTIAL G.E.M. SKUES. Edited by Kenneth Robson.

Skues (G.E.M.)., Robson (Kenneth).

ISBN 10: 0713638923 / ISBN 13: 9780713638929

Published by A & C Black. London. 1998, 1998

About this Item

ALL UK PARCELS SENT TRACKED! ALL OVERSEAS PARCELS SENT AIRMAIL, TRACKED! (S/hand, Hardcover, 1998). 1998 1st edition. 8vo (140 x 222mm). Ppxii,260. B/w photographs, illustrations by Alex and Charles Jardine, bibliography. Cream boards, spine titled in black. Minor faults but very good in dust-wrapper. A good collection, including some previously unpublished material and photographs. A nice introduction to the wit and intelligence of the father of nymph fishing. Chapters include: The life of G.E.M. Skues; Boyhood fishing days; Fishing with Skues; Skues and the trout; Fly dressing; Fly patterns; Skues and the nymph; Entomology; Rods and lines; Skues on the river; Skues the tactician; Skues the observer; Skues the humorist; Famous fly fishermen; Dry fly; wet fly: Halford, Skues and the nymph; Skues and the Itchen; End pieces. The book includes a foreword by John Goddard and an afterword by Robert H. Berls. .

Seller Inventory # 26718

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE ESSENTIAL G.E.M. SKUES. Edited by Kenneth Robson.
• Publisher: A & C Black. London. 1998
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713638923
• ISBN 13: 9780713638929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis

George Edward Mackenzie Skues fished from boyhood until he was 87, and became an expert in every aspect of fly fishing including entomology, fly dressing and fly patterns, and fly fishing techniques, methods and tactics. This book collects together some of Skues's best writings on fly fishing.

Review

Had there been no real flesh-and-blood George Edward Mackenzie Skues, doubtless a G.K. Chesterton or P.G. Wodehouse would have simply created him. Born in 1858, Skues was one of those classically British characters whose very essence and long life--he died in 1949--managed to tie the Victorian world to the 20th century. He was tweedy, literate, formal, and avuncular; a confirmed bachelor, he wore a monocle, practiced law, had memberships in clubs, loved the theater, and counted among his dinner companions Oscar Wilde and the African explorer Henry Morton Stanley. All of which serves as footnote to his legacy: a transcendent zeal for trout fishing and the wonderful words he left behind on that sometimes rancorous, always fulfilling love.

Skues wrote as elegantly, perceptively, and passionately on fishing as anyone has before or since, and this collection of his best work--theory and practice, philosophy, fiction, and poetry--displays his enormous skills and his agile mind with great affection and care, with each selection presented in context. Known as the father of nymph fishing in an era when going beneath the surface was considered less than cricket, Skues's prose is at its most deftly spirited in its (and his) defense: "Nymph fishing is a comparatively new art," he wrote late in his life, "or perhaps it would be fairer to say a new phase of an old and largely forgotten art ... [but] the dry fly became a sort of religion and any attempt to revert to the older practice was regarded as a sort of sin against the Holy Ghost for which there was no remission." The sin today is how much of Skues's work has been cast below the surface of availability. The Essential G.E.M. Skues atones mightily for that horrible sin. --Jeff Silverman