Chris McCully

'Fly-fishing: a Book of Words' appeared from Carcanet in 1993. The work is a kind of annotated dictionary, in which I was trying, however clumsily, to analyse the development of fly-fishing as a pastime by analysing parts of the structure and history of its vocabulary.

The book was astonishingly generously received, and in 1996 appeared in paperback (Oxford University Press, re-titled as 'A Dictionary of Fly-Fishing'). The paperback quickly sold out.

I occasionally re-read the work and am surprised by how much I left out. It's not just a question of all the Americanisms (I was writing originally for a UK readership), but also some British English dialectal terms. Why, for example, did I overlook the Scottish English word 'fankle' (= tangle)? And the Northern English dialect word 'caffle' (= another tangle)?

For all its faults the work is still, I think and hope, entertaining, even useful. I have one remaining copy of the first hardback edition, available for 10GBP plus postage. Please contact me if you'd like to have it.