The fish have personality: an aquarium book from 1925

Royal Dixon and Brayton Eddy wrote about fish and other water animals the way one might write about neighbours, with characters and habits of their own. The book belongs to the popular nature writing of the early twentieth century, made for a broad audience rather than for scientists.

Its chapters follow water animals through courtship, hunting and self-defence, and through the ways they behave toward one another, in prose that is easy to read. A colour frontispiece of tropical fish opens the book, and black-and-white photographs and plates of animals and scenes run through the text, so the reader can see the creatures being described.

Brentano’s published it in New York. This printing is dated 1925, though its copyright line reads 1922, and no edition is stated in the pages photographed. It is in the publisher’s green cloth with a colour aquarium scene set into the front board and the title in gilt; the spine head and edges are lightly scuffed and faded, the corners rubbed, and some of the early pages spotted. There is no dust jacket.