Sir Peter Crisp Collection

696 books and pamphlets relating to freshwater fishing. The majority are British, but also include about 130 Australian works and a number published in New Zealand and America. Most date from the twentieth century, but also include some nineteenth-century imprints.

Key items in the collection

The Crisp Collection comprises 696 books and pamphlets relating to freshwater fishing. The majority are British publications, but there are also about 130 Australian works and a number of books published in New Zealand and America. Although most of the works date from the twentieth century, there are a substantial number of nineteenth-century imprints.

Examples of some of the early works in the collection are:

Other authors represented in the collection include Robert Blakey, Frank Buckland, F. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Viscount Grey of Falloden, Stephen Gwynn, John Waller Hills, Vic McCristal, Arthur Ransome, William Senior, H.T. Sheringham, Thomas Tod Stoddart, Eric Taverner, Harvey Turing and Lawrence Wackett.

About Peter Crisp

Sir (Malcolm) Peter Crisp (1912–1984) was born in Burnie, Tasmania, and educated at Burnie Convent School, Riverview College (Sydney) and the University of Tasmania. He was called to the Bar in 1933. In 1935 he was appointed Deputy Registrar of the Supreme Court of Tasmania and he subsequently held other official posts, including Crown Prosecutor, Crown Solicitor and Solicitor-General. He was appointed a King’s Counsel in 1951 and in 1952 became a judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania. He was knighted in 1969 and retired in 1971.

Crisp had a strong interest in libraries. He was President of the Library Board of Tasmania from 1956 to 1977. He was a foundation member of the National Library Council and Chairman in 1971. He was also President of the Library Association of Australia in 1963–66 and Chairman of the Australian Council of Bibliographical Services in 1973–83.

In a paper entitled ‘The vicarious angler’, Crisp wrote that ‘my principal recreation has been to fish for trout and, for one brief period, salmon … Over the years [I] have sought, vicariously, to assuage my perpetual disappointments by recourse to the literature of angling, rather fitfully and intermittently, perhaps, but with an ever increasing interest, instruction and sometimes amusement’. He described his collection of fishing books as a working collection, not a rare book collection. For instance, he did not hold any early editions of Izaak Walton’s The complete angler. He hoped that in the Library his collection would complement the Charles Collection, which was smaller but contains a number of books published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Background to the collection

Crisp bequeathed his collection of fishing books to the Library. It was received in 1985.

The Peter Crisp Collection has been kept together as a collection. The books have been catalogued individually; the call numbers have the prefix MPC.

This guide was prepared using these references:

Page published: 07 Nov 2019

Need help?

Our librarians are here to guide you.

Ask a librarian