INTR OD UCTION 



2s. 6d. per egg, and cockerels of his strain 

 fetched from £'^ to £6 each, and all this with- 

 out a line of advertisement on his part. 



February, 1872, saw the publication of his 

 first shilling monthly part of " The 

 "The°Book ^°°'^ °'" Poultry," a work which at 

 of Poultry" once scored a tremendous success; 

 for, in addition to its clear and practi- 

 cal information, the _ 



masterly style in which 

 this was expressed 

 justly earned for its 

 author the foremost 

 position amongst poul- 

 try I i 1 1 (' ra t c It r s. 

 The fift)' coloured 

 platen, by Mr. Ludlow, 

 with which the book 

 was illustrated, were 

 also a distinct advance 

 in the delineation of 

 the fancy points of 

 poultr)-, and ma)- be 

 said to have initiated 

 the style of bird por- 

 traiture so familiar to 

 the readers of the 

 modern Fancy Press. 

 Some idea of the de- 

 mand for Mr. Wright's 

 great work may be 

 gathered from the fol- 

 lowing facts. In 1876 

 a re-issue of the work 

 was called for in fifty 

 monthly parts ; in 18S3 a cheap popular edition 

 was published without the coloured plates ; the 

 year 1887 saw a complete revision of the te.Kt 

 and plates, owing to the changes which had 

 taken place since the first issue ; and in Feb- 

 ruary, 1892, further revision was made in the 

 text of the popular edition, then again re-issued. 

 Such facts as these speak for themselves as to 

 the estimation in which " The Book of Poultry " 

 was held by English-speaking fanciers, and it 

 is gratifying to know that foreigners also have, by 

 translations, freely availed themselves of the store 

 of knowledge with which the work is replete. 



It was but natural that pigeon fanciers shouldi 

 on seeing what had been done for poultry. 



LEWIS WKIGIIT. 



demand a similar work for their particular 

 hobby, and so in 1874 was commenced "The 

 Book of Pigeons," b)' Mr. R. Fulton, which owes 

 no small measure of its immense popularity 

 to the wise editorship and literary skill which 

 Mr. Wright brought to bear upon the written 

 notes, supplemented by many verbal confer- 

 ences, recording Mr. Fulton's long experi- 

 ence of pigeons. This 

 work, like its prede- 

 cessor, has long ranked 

 as the standard autho- 

 rity on the subject. 

 From the experience 

 gathered upon this 

 work doubtless re- 

 sulted "The Practical 

 Pigeon-Keeper," uni- 

 form with its author's 

 first book, which ran 

 through eleven editions. 

 The editing of Blak- 

 ston's " Canaries and 

 Cage-birds," the first 

 part of which appeared 

 in 1877, may be said to 

 have completed for a 

 time the tale of obliga- 

 tion under which 

 fanciers must always 

 remain to Mr. Wright, 

 and the list of books 

 produced speaks well 

 of his capacity for work, 

 especially when it is 

 remembered that during their production, from 

 1874 to 1879, Lewis Wright was editor of Tlie 

 Fanciers Gazette, started by Messrs. Cassell, and 

 subsequently developed by them into The Live 

 Stock Journal. His tenure of this office was not 

 always a bed of roses ; for whether it was that 

 the Fancy was then in the first flush of vigorous 

 youth, and, so to speak, pugnaciously inclined, or 

 from the fact that there were many abuses to 

 be reformed — and to these the editor showed 

 but scant mercy — the period was one when an 

 honest expression of editorial opinion was often 

 the signal for a fierce journalistic combat. 



This literary activity, unfortunately, left but 

 little time for attending to his own Brahmas, and 



