The Fly Leaf (Private Edition)

London, Canada, Nd(ca.1955): Privately Printed. First Edition. Octavo. An extraordinarily rare printing of perhaps 25 copies, 38, [7] pp. Privately printed by mimeograph by the author who, after suffering a horrible accident when a horse fell on him during a London Hunt and Country Club, retired from hunting and became devoted to fly fishing. After becoming the Chancellor of the University of Western Ontario, he fished the Restigouche and it is probably that river he refers to in The Fly Leaf. A much later edition was privately printed in London, Ontario, in June 1968, 30 pp., in a smaller format. Cronyn is quoted in Maclean's (June 1, 1968), discussing his plans to publish the 1968 pamphlet: "It's dreadfully boring," says Cronyn, "-except for the man who wants to learn to cast a fly." He has a few pages aimed at beginners and then moves into very detailed additional procedures and preparations with a precise chart on the issues of nylon, silk, weights, length, and torpedo level. This copy once belonged to the Horse Island Camp established by William Butts Marshon who first came to the Cascapedia in 1884. The camp changed ownership several times and 1943 formally became Horse Island. Bound in green printed stiff paper wraps backed in green cloth, lettering black, stain to upper wrap. A very nice, clean copy of this exceedingly rare fishing book. The first edition is not recorded in OCLC, which only locates five copies of the uncommon 1968 printing. Very nice.