Dame Juliana Berners

Dame Juliana Berners (flourished 1460) was an English prioress and author of A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle (1496), the earliest known volume on sport fishing. Berners’s work predates Englishman Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653), the best-known example of early angling literature, by approximately 150 years.

Berners was a noblewoman and prioress of the Sopwell Nunnery near St. Albans, Eng., during the late 15th century, but little is known or recorded about her life other than her writing and publication of the Treatyse. Various accounts of the history of fishing literature describe her as a woman of keen intellect and an accomplished practitioner and avid devotee of outdoor sports, including angling and hunting.

Despite its antiquity, Treatyse remains a remarkable work for its detail and vision. A comprehensive guide for the anglers of its time, the book contains substantial information on fishing destinations, rod and line construction, and selection of natural baits and preferred artificial fly dressings categorized by the season of their optimum utility. Perhaps most remarkable are the essays on the virtues of conservation, respecting the rights of streamside landowners, and angler’s etiquette. These concepts would not come to be commonly accepted and advocated in the angling world until 400 years after the publication of the Treatyse, yet today they embody the ethical bedrock of sport fishing.

Numerous women’s fly-fishing clubs and associations in the United States and Europe are named for Berners in tribute to her legacy as the first author of either gender to chronicle the fine points of the sport of angling.