BICKERDYKE, John. Wild Sports in Ireland. With sepia and monochrome photographs.

London: Upcott, 1897. Crown octavo. pp. xii, 234, [12 (Publisher's List)], [12 (Advertisements)]. Original pink papered boards, title and duck in gilt on upper cover, repeated on spine. A very good copy. Very scarce.
John Bickerdyke, an Englishman (real name Charles Henry Cook), wrote several books about angling, shooting, sailing, beer and photography. His writings are a pleasure to read. And even those who don't like angling will find much of interest in this work. He was a good photographer, and there are reproductions of several of his pictures in the book. He chartered a yacht for his visits to Lough Derg, and spent weeks anchored out, winter and summer, so there is quite a lot of boating in the book. That includes yacht-racing, being icebound in the Scariff River and a gale during which Bickerdyke had to put the boat's iron stove overboard to back the anchors.
His writing also covers the period of boycotts and evictions on the western shore, and he describes, sympathetically, the effects on both landlords and tenants. In the preface he tells us: "and I gather that books of sporting reminiscences appeal most strongly, and bring feelings of delight, tempered maybe with regret, if they contain a whiff of the heather and turf reek, wafted through sunlight by breezes, perhaps brine-laden, to the music of rippling, gurgling streams, roaring rivers, or lake wavelets breaking on the shore". Tales of shooting and fishing along the Shannon and in the West of Ireland. Many references on pike fishing, together with mentions of salmon and trout, slob trout, gillaroo and char.

[L3 1B]