North Country spider article

[Anherd]

Here we go, the comparison between Sylvester Lister and Les Magee.

[redietz]

I would have made more mistakes, I think.

[Anherd]

I would have made more mistakes, I think.

Me too, it was a nightmare list. When I typed it up all those years ago, I remember I had to do it one fly at a time.

I haven't done the math, but although Magee definitely blew it with the Dark Bloa, his other mistakes were limited to missing out the bodies on four other flies (3, 4, 6 and 36) and forgetting to put the word silk in 22 and 26. Also, the first fly is missing the words 'orange silk'. I think Les had a word block there. For a book of its time, which was a pioneer of the genre, he did OK.

The reason for the delay in posting the pdf was that I spent so long yacking on the phone with Smith Settle, (who published Magee's book). They still remember him fondly.

[upstatetrout]

Me thinks there could be a novel idea hidden here????????

T.

[Anherd]

Me thinks there could be a novel idea hidden here????????

T.

As in a new idea, of a work of fiction? How about 'The Ballad of Les Magee' ??

[Anherd]

For people who are curious about how I came up with that comparative list so fast, I did it when Magee's book was published. In those days, Word had not long made it onto Windoze, and as far as I know, Les submitted his text as a typewritten MS. Believe it or now, I have dealt with a few authors who still do. Amazing.

I got into writing because when I was at medical school I moonlighted as a copy editor and a fact checker. That was back in the late 70s. My training consisted of being told that there were three types of writers: the trusties, the chancers, and the cheaters. As a fact checker, I had to identify them. The reason was that the paper's or the publisher's good name rested on publishing stuff that was correct, and as one editor pointed out to me, if he had wanted to publish fiction, he would have been with Gollancz, not a national newspaper.

The way things were checked, which I still do, was that you sat down and checked every date mentioned in a piece, the spelling of every name, relationships (fortunately Somerset House, where all the genealogy records were held, was across the road), any assertion that a writer didn't corroborate or footnote, whether two people who were said to have met could have met, the whole nine yards. It took forever, but you very quickly learned how good a writer actually was. If they made assertions that they couldn't corroborate, and didn't flag them up as such in the text, then they were a chancer. On the other hand, if they made errors where a date was hard to establish, and they got it a year out, or you came across a mistake that was easy to understand the reasons for, then—as long as there wasn't too much of that kind of thing—then they were probably a trusty.

Trusties have a background error rate which is a matter of experience, I guess, but in a book of about 200 pages published pre interweb, I would expect to find about 50-60 minor errors. The pre interweb thing is important, because checking anything usually meant going to London to find out and spending a day in the British Library, or Somerset House. That is why you don't see many fishing history books published prior to 1995—the fact finding was too much like hard work. Magee falls bang in the middle of that range, The book generates three pages of errors, mostly of the sort "P.87. Otley angling club was founded c 1841 not 1853. Walbran was born in 1851 not 1853. Pritt was not a member of the Appletreewick, Barden and Burnsall club," or, "T. W. Wilson should be T. K". Mistakes like those aren't serious, unless there are too many of them. Some of the mistakes in his book aren't really mistakes, because he wrote down things that other writers had accepted to be true, but which were subsequently found out not to be so.

Around the time that Magee's book came out, publishers started asking my opinion about angling books, and from that moment on, I began to see many of the manuscripts that had been submitted, and I would make comments. In my spare time, I kept up my skills by checking any book about the history of angling that did get published—and as I subsequently discovered so did another guy, who is a friend of mine now. The problem with history is that there are lots of dates, and some of the angling books were quite bad, with double or triple the error rates you would have expected pre-Interweb.

There was one particular manuscript, written many, many years ago. The publisher was going to reject the MS, because he didn't feel right about it, but he sent it to me anyway. I discovered meetings in it that couldn't have occurred (in one case, one of the guys was dead before the other was born) and errors that weren't really errors, because the author used them to build a case for other things he wanted to prove, but couldn't. If you didn't question each error, then the case looked convincing, but if you did, it fell apart. The guy is dead now, but I have always wondered why he risked writing something where there was such a big chance of him getting caught out.

People write books for all kinds of reasons, but one motivation is because they want generate respect and love—it is as corny as that. Sometimes that goes wrong along the way, and short cuts get taken and facts even get made up, to make stories seem more likely to the reader. Some publishers don't check, and a big warning flag against them is if you ring up and ask who their editor is, and they either don't have one, or it is the designer.

Finally, one of the reasons why I have all those pesky footnotes in my books is so that if someone asks me a question, I can just retrieve the evidence, as in Magee vs Lister.

TL; DR: Les wasn't perfect, but as a pioneer of the history of North Country fly fishing, he did OK by the standards of the day. Some modern authors are still repeating the mistakes he made though, the best warning flag I can think of being missing out the t on Norman Nellist Lee, and the Chippindale/Chippendale thing. Those are minor errors, but they make a wonderful audit trail.

[ronr]

This has been one of the most entertaining and interesting discussion I've found on the forum. My first born is an editor and has worked for publishers such as Bloomsbury and Chronicle Books, as well as free lance. Though most of her work was in fiction, she often commented about types of writers, and how well they researched their topics.
The historians on this forum provide so much useful information to someone like me who came to the sport late in life and will never have the time to gain their levels of knowledge and skill. So, thanks for doing the research for me.

History has always been perplexing to me a bit. Since none of us were around in the 17-1800's for example we are all at the mercy of the writings or verbal stories of those before us. Who can say what actually occurred, who said what, what were the biases of those early writers, and what really is the truth.... So we have historians to interpret and provide their opinions of what occurred... and as we all know... opinions are like arseholes... we all have them..

[Mike62]

This is a fascinating discussion. I was a little taken aback at first by what I thought was an unnecessary broadside toward Mr. Smith, but Rob seems to have an arsenal worthy of rebutting Mr. Herd. I just finished reading McDonald's 'Quill Gordon', again, and the tone of this conversation is wonderfully similar to the way McDonald wrote of the heated discussions of antiquity over certain claims of authenticity.

The painting of the fishing monks has always been a favorite of mine, and now it's become the wallpaper for this computer. It also serves as a reminder of the back and forth between scholars over the authorship of the Book of Saint Albans. Was Julianna really a fishing prioress? Did monks fish? ...and why wouldn't they. I guess when scholars fall all about themselves over the details it can get a little pointed. I'm just glad the gentlemen here are willing to sit down and share a pint after this dust settles.

Carry on, gentlemen. Carry on.

[DUBBN]

opinions are like arseholes... we all have them..

Yes, and most people's stink, a lot more than mine.

[Anherd]

This has been one of the most entertaining and interesting discussion I've found on the forum. My first born is an editor and has worked for publishers such as Bloomsbury and Chronicle Books, as well as free lance. Though most of her work was in fiction, she often commented about types of writers, and how well they researched their topics.
The historians on this forum provide so much useful information to someone like me who came to the sport late in life and will never have the time to gain their levels of knowledge and skill. So, thanks for doing the research for me.

History has always been perplexing to me a bit. Since none of us were around in the 17-1800's for example we are all at the mercy of the writings or verbal stories of those before us. Who can say what actually occurred, who said what, what were the biases of those early writers, and what really is the truth.... So we have historians to interpret and provide their opinions of what occurred... and as we all know... opinions are like arseholes... we all have them..

Exactly right—and that's where people like the much maligned Les Magee are so useful. They blaze the trail, and maybe they don't get everything quite right, and inevitably they make a few mistakes here and there, but it is a hell of a sight easier walking the track they leave than doing it yourself. Second person through gets to smooth off the corners, everyone after that gets to admire the scenery. But everyone who walks the trail owes its existence to the first person who went there.