Alfred Ronalds’Fly Fisher’s Entomology with a commentary and illustrations by Paul Troël  £35. Published by Coch y Bonddu Books, www.anglebooks.com

THIS book started out simply as a transition of Alfred Ronalds’ book The Fly-Fisher’s Entomology from English into French. But along the way, the author added a commentary and his own illustrations.The result was published in 2024, and is now republished with the commentary and Ronalds’ text in English.

There have been many editions of the original book, so no review of that portion of this book is necessary, other than to note that when it was published in 1836, it was the first book to illustrate both the natural fly and the author’s suggested artificial imitation, together with tying information.

Troël has not just lifted the Ronalds text from one of the many editions, but has selected sections from several editions in compiling his work, and he has added many illustrations of his own. Some of the original Ronalds illustrations have even been repeated. There are, for example, four examples of the single plate illustrating caterpillars. This has been done to demonstrate some of the differences between the 1839, 1856, 1901 and 1913 editions, and it gives an idea of the detailed comparisons made in the book.

The author gives full acknowledgement to Beverley Ronalds (descendant of the man himself) for her book Alfred Ronalds:Angler,Artisan & Australian Pioneer, published in 2022. I had thought that with another book on the subject published only a couple of years earlier, there might not be room for this one – but this is not the case. True, there is some overlap between the two, but Beverley Ronalds’ book is devoted to Ronalds, the man and his life, whereas this one focuses on Ronalds’ original book and the changes that were made through its many editions.

The new artwork (by Troël himself) might be described as stylised and a little abstract, and some readers might feel it is not in keeping with the factual context of Ronalds’ book. Of the total 240 pages, 115 are lifted from the various Ronalds’ editions, with his original text and illustrations of natural and artificial flies. Troël’s comments are included throughout but there are also several additional sections that the author has written.These include an entomology of Ronalds’ flies, together with modern illustrations of the natural flies.

Eighteen pages are devoted to the 1913 deluxe edition alone, and there are descriptions, with 25 illustrations, of Ronalds’ Companion fly wallets. Unfortunately, these only show the front pages of the wallets, which is a pity because this means there are no descriptions of the different structures, particularly of the earliest wallets issued by Ronalds himself and the tackle maker Eaton & Deller, which were a bit special compared with those that followed.

The book goes into great detail describing and evaluating the differences between the various editions. For both readers and researchers wanting to see that level of analysis, there is much of interest here.