"Fishing was for Lang a part of a much larger, broader world. . . . That willingness to digress was part of Lang's peculiar magic as an angling writer."--Paul Schullery, from the introduction: Though first published in 1891, Lang's Angling Sketches could fit right in with today's fly-fishing literature in many of its common, almost universal themes. "The Confessions of a Duffer" is a subtle and telling critique of modern angling's perfectionist ambitions. "The Lady or the Salmon?" has proven just as durable and even more popular as the prototype of a fisherman's romance. And Lang's comments on the fishing of his day--crowded streams, laments about the good old days, and so on--all sound very modern indeed. A great storyteller, he was a prodigiously productive writer and scholar, expert in anthropology, the classics, folklore, history, literary and social criticism, religion, fiction, and poetry. That wealth of knowledge makes Andrew Lang's Angling Tales unique among classic fly-fishing literature.

Norm Zeigler is a New York Times outdoors columnist, a contributing editor at Florida Sportsman, and a contributing writer at Art of Angling Journal. Norm and his family divide their time between Sanibel Island, Florida, and Dillon, Montana.