William Blacker-Phantom of the Past

The Blacker trilogy has the longest gestation of any book on fishing published in recent times, partly because very little was known about William Blacker before we started our research. The project is a unique fusion of the skills of a talented multi-national team, backed up by researchers based in three different countries on two continents. You can read more about the team here, but the book is the end product of work that began in the early 1990s, when Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch began to assemble his unrivalled collection of copies of the scarce Blacker 1842 and 1843 editions. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most ambitious book on an angling topic ever attempted (for example, the three volumes contain nearly a thousand photographs), and in an age where publishers are doing everything they can to cut costs and quality, our aim is to show what can be done. In many ways, this will be our legacy, and we hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we have done producing it.

The Medlar website (see link below) describes the contents of the 'standard' edition, which will be sold as a three-volume set in a slip case. The sets will be printed in what can only be described as a majestic size on 150gsm aqueous coated paper in full colour litho. Please note that the book will not be reprinted in this format ever again, so if you want to be sure of getting a copy, please reserve it now by visiting the link at the bottom of this page. Emails will be logged in the time order in which they are received and in the interests of fairness, only one set will be sold to each buyer.

The book will print very shortly and the majority of the sets are already reserved. The quality of the production of the 'ordinary' edition is such that it exceeds the standard of the majority of modern limited editions, and the print run is small enough that we are sure that a set will be an appreciating asset.

The collector's edition of 12 three volume sets, each of which will include three salmon flies, all of which have been tied in the hand, are sold out.

If you wish to reserve a set, please visit the Medlar Press website Blacker page by clicking this link.