William Radcliffe

William Radcliffe was a British writer best remembered for Fishing from the Earliest Times (1921), a wide-ranging study of fishing in ancient cultures. Library of Congress records list him as living from 1856 to 1938, and the book itself presents him as "sometime of Balliol College, Oxford."

In the preface to that work, he explains that the project grew from a search for a quotation from Homer, then expanded into a broader attempt to examine Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Jewish, and Chinese material on fishing. He also describes himself as someone who had been a practical pisciculturist for many years and an angler all his life, which helps explain the book’s mix of scholarship and practical interest.

Although little biographical information was easy to confirm, his surviving reputation rests on that ambitious volume, which has remained of interest to readers of sporting history, classics, and the history of everyday life. It stands out for treating fishing not just as a pastime, but as a subject connected to literature, custom, and the long history of human skill.