Old angling books on the internet

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Vanderpauw
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Old angling books on the internet

Post by Vanderpauw »

Today many old angling books - some of them classics - are available for free as PDF's on the internet. With a few exceptions these are generally books that were published at least a century ago, so before 1921. Many British and American angling books that are available from collections of universities in the USA, can be downloaded for free as PDF's within the USA, where they belong to the public domain, but most of them have not yet been made freely available for people in Europe yet. However, it's fairly easy to approach these American websites via a sever in the USA, by means of a so-called Virtual Private Network (VPN); I use https://protonvpn.com/ and download the PDF's just the same. I'm not a computer nerd at all and I can do it.

Some websites that I use in my search for PDF's of old angling books are listed below.

European Register of Microform and Digital Masters : https://www.eromm.org/

Google Books : https://books.google.com/

WorldCat : https://www.worldcat.org/

Hathi Trust (Book Catalogue of the British Museum): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001761602

Internet Archive : https://archive.org/index.php

Project Gutenberg : https://www.gutenberg.org/

Library of Congress : https://www.loc.gov/

University of British Columbia, Harry Hawthorn Foundation Collection :
https://hawthorn.library.ubc.ca/

I hope this will prove helpful for fellow angler's searching for classic angling literature.
If anybody should be interested in a list of the angling books I've downloaded myself from the internet (and that can be found out there in space, consequently), I could post this list in this topic. But I'm told I cannot upload a PDF, so it's going to be a rather lengthy post (over a 100 titles).

Hans (from Holland)

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Bobthefloat
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Bobthefloat »

Wow what a fantastic post thank you Hans :Hat: :cheers:

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Vanderpauw
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Vanderpauw »

PS - Don't be put off by that VPN-stuff (see above). By far most books can be downloaded without a VPN.

Hans.

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Duckett
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Duckett »

Thanks Hans. I’ve been a regular user of Project Gutenberg for many years now. It can be a nightmare to search but it does have Arthur Ransom’s works.

Phil
From "... the wilds of the Wirral, whose wayward people both God and good men have quite given up on ...".

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Vanderpauw
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Vanderpauw »

No, alas, Phill. As I remarked, there are hardly any free PDF's of angling books to be found on the internet that are younger than 1921. And Ransome's 'Rod and Line' was first published in 1929. Luckily I have the 2006 Medlar edition. It also contains Ransome's story of the Russian writer Sergei Aksakov, including his translation of several fine angling episodes by Aksakov.
Try the European Register of Microform and Digital Masters for searching as well (mentioned above). This does contain PDF's some of Arthur Ransome's earlier books; regrettably none about fishing.

Hans.

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Vanderpauw
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Vanderpauw »

Sorry Phill, I read it wrong. Project Gutenberg does have some of Ransome's books. But not 'Rod and Line', as far as I know.

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Vanderpauw
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Vanderpauw »

For a link to a free PDF of the Rev. James Martin's fine book 'The Angler's Guide - The most complete and practical ever written' (1854) see the topic 'Rev. James Martin - The other great Martin!' in the section Famous Traditional Anglers > Other Traditional Anglers.

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Chris R
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Chris R »

Thank you Vanderpauw for the information regarding old angling books that can be downloaded from various universities. Just for an example Arthur Ransomes angling books are available and I’ve always wanted to read them.

That’s this winters reading sorted!

Thanks again
Chris

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Chris R
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by Chris R »

Sorry Vanderpauw -I didn’t read the other posts on this topic before I emailed.

Chris

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OhMyGoodness
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Re: Old angling books on the internet

Post by OhMyGoodness »

Google 'open library' and they have all of H.T.Sheringham classics...as pdf.
An Anglers Hours
Coarse Fishing
An Open Creel
Trout fishing memories and morals

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