j.w.martin

[si]

anyone know how many books this guy wrote i have looked tru the net and can only find scattered info on 2-3 books by him

and any info on reprints as the copies i have found are not cheap!!

 

[Nigel Connor(ACA ,SAA)]

I dont have a full bibliography for him, unfortunatley.Ron might help being a Trent man.

As for reprints look at the Medlar Press site as they have reprinted 2 or 3 I think.

 

[si]

thanks nigel i found the medlar website it has 2 of the books the barbel book is in print @ ?35 but the My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways is not yet published so i have reserved a copy @?45

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

So have I and quite frankly Medlar Press are being slow about the job.

I was promised a copy of "My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways" two years ago.

Martin wrote several books. The titles that I remember are:

"My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways"

"Barbel"

"Days amongst Pike and Perch"

"Rod and Tackle Making"

There were several others of course. Martin was probably the greatest coarse angling writer of the 19th and early 20th century.

Richard Walker admired him tremendously.

 

[rollingpinboy]

I have a 1st edition of 'Float Fishing and Spinning in the Nottingham Style'...Ray

 

[Mark Wintle]

Add "Roach, Rudd and Bream Fishing"
"The Trent Otter's Little Book of Fishing"

 

[Fred Bonney]

?60 here
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=167302474
"Days amongst Pike and Perch"

 

[Fred Bonney]

Have a look at these

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=jw+martin&y=25&x=16&sortby=3

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

Ray,

If that's a first edition, how much have you got it incured for?

What made Martin so great was that he left "school" at about the age of 10, virtually illiterate. During his 20s he taught himself to read and write to a level where he was writing books and article in his 30s.

He was also a truly humble man and wrote, as he said so many times, for the "simple working man angler" and not the expert. Yet the experts also read his books and acclaimed him as one of the greatest angling writers of his era who ever lived.

 

[Alan Roe]

He also wrote 'Practical Fishing For the So Called Coarse Fishes' Price 1/-

 

[Len Arbery]

Si,

I am a great fan of John William Martin, the Trent Otter, and his books. In my library I have nine different Martin titles:

1. Coarse Fish Angling
2. Barbel and Chub Fishing
3. Roach, Rudd & Bream Fishing In Many Waters
4. Pike and Perch Fishing
5. Practical Fishing
6. The Trent Otter's Little Angling Book
7. Days Among the Pike and Perch
8. The Nottingham Style of Float Fishing and Spinning
9. My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways

There are more than one edition of most of these titles. Like Rollingpin Boy I, too, have a first edition of The Nottingham Style, and a second!

Martin's books are keenly sought, and rightly so, and are becoming increasingly difficult, not to say expensive, to obtain.

My personal favourite is 'My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways'

Len

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

Len,

I would willingly invade my pension fund and pay ?5k for those books of yours.

Jack Martin was without doubt one of the best.

For me, it is the fact that I regularly walk in his shoes on the banks of England's greatest river. I was fishing a new spot the other day. The river is over 200 yards wide there.

A friend of mine got a 23 lb carp. No boilie gut either.

I have two favourite writers of the last century.

Walker and Martin.

It's difficult to say who was the greatest.

 

[Len Arbery]

Ron,

Are you sure?!!!

Seriously, my Martin books are not for sale; well, not yet.

Like you, and like I said, J.W.Martin is one of my all-time favourite fishing authors. At one time I considered writing a book about him and, during the research actually tracked down his last living London relative, a grandson. As you are probably well aware, Ron, the Trent Otter moved his business eventually to London,to Euston Square.

When one considers Martin's father died when he was only ten, which put an end to his schooling because he had to provide for his mother. And when he tells us he did any menial task to put a crust of bread on the table, 'receiving more cuffs than halfpence, from men who should have known better', for his trouble. His is a truly remarkable story.

Old 'JW' also tells us he fished in twenty-two different rivers. Not many could better that boast today and Martin didn't have the benefit of easy travel we take for granted today.

I also enjoy **** Walker's writing too, and I've much to thank it for, not to mention Sheringham, but to me, the old Trent Otter is the tops.

Regards, Len

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

Len, I didn't mean that I would want to take your copies. More that if I could get them, that's what I would be prepared to pay.

It's incredible how a man like Martin was able to write so well considering the poor circumstances of his childhood. The story goes that he met someone during his 20s - maybe a schoolteacher who befriended him and taught him to read and write properly.

His fishing companions were also friends for life. People like Frank Sims who kept a boat moored at Dunham Dubs, just above Dunham Bridge on the Trent. The "Dubs" is the big double bend there. In Martin's day there were some deep holes in the river there where he and Frank used to catch large numbers of bream.

Have you ever fished the Trent Len?

Make no mistake Martin would recognise the river today. The bream these days run to over 9 lbs and the barbel are much bigger than in Martin's day. However I have an inkling that there were lots of big barbel then. The tackle used then, compared with modern gear, was pretty inadequate when one hooked into a biggie.

Today there are many many miles of the Trent that never sees an angler from one year to the next. Especially the tidal reaches from Dunham to Gainsborough. This remains one of England's last outposts in terms of pioneering the capture of big fish.

I often wish that I was a lot younger.

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

By the way Len have you ever fished with chandlers greaves? Martin reckoned this the top barbel bait of the lot.

Many years ago, through my Uncle Charles, I was able to contact a man in the Wylwye valley in Wiltshire who made candles the traditional way. He supplied a number of churches with his candles.

Greaves were the scrapings or "scratchings" at the bottom of the boiling pot after animal carcasses had been rendered down. Stunk awful it did.

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

By the way Len, if by asking you if you had ever fished with chandlers greaves, might imply that you are very old, I do apologise.

You are most likely much younger than myself or Graham.

 

[GrahamM]

Hey up Ron, I'm only a lad in my head, bloody body doesn't believe it though.

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

That's my problem Graham.

All those marvellous swims on the lower Tidal Trent beckon, but after 50 yards with my gear I am knackered.

And the banks - horrible they are.

 

[Len Arbery]

Ron,
No need for apologies:no offence taken. Now if I was as 'long in the tooth' as 'BBB' (Bob 'Breadflake' Buteux)it might be different. But nobody else could possibly be as old all that!!! Moreover, like Graham, I make as least concession to age as he does! Like the current TV ad says - at heart I'm still only seventeen! Though the calendar says different, but surely it can't possibly be 65! I still recall, though, news in the 'comics' of the beginning of your sojourn in Africa. Didn't even know of your return until Ron Chant told me. Oh! and his calendar is exactly the opposite - he's twenty-years older!

No, never fished the Trent. Only know it from old Martin's writings.You say the barbel are bigger today yet Martin mentions the Newark tackle dealer,'poor old Owen' and his journal, which, if my memory doesn't fail me, recorded barbel over 17lb!

AS you probably well know, Ron, Frank Sims was only one of many life-long friends and mentors of the old Trent Otter. On the Trent these included, Thomas Sunman, James Chatterton, Thomas Bentley, Andrew Broughton, George Holland, Owen, Corby and William Bailey. And, later in London where, incidently, he became a trustee of the London Anglers' Association Benefit Fund and a lay preacher, all this in addition to running his tackle business and being a prolific author! JW's counted among his friends:Robert Bright Marston(editor and proprietor of the Fishing Gazzette), author and journalist,Hugh Tempest Sheringham, John Cooper(of the famed taxidermist company),etc, etc, etc.

No, I've never fished with greaves, though 'BBB' has fished with 'bullock's pith and brains'! See! I told you he was ancient!

Regards, Len

 

[Ron Troversial Clay]

Len,

You are obviously an angling historian of the highest order. I never knew that Martin became a lay preacher.

I, now in my 63rd year, am intensely interested in angling history. Our sport has an incredible history which includes some of the finest literature in any subject. "The Compleat Angler" is still the second best seller to The Bible.

Yet I find that delving into angling history, particularly that of the last 150 years, extremely frustrating. There seems to be a barrier somehow. And obtaining copies of old books, extremely expensive or virtually non-existant.

I would have thought that in this day and age, Someone would have compiled "The Complete Works of Richard Walker" or even JW Martin.

Perhaps its up to us, the old farts, to resurrect these old writings. And I'll tell you something. A lot of what you read in the "comics" as you call them is not all that new.

Bolt rigs and "hair rigs" go back to the Victorian era. Although they didn't call them that in those days.