Izaak Walton
born Aug. 9, 1593, Stafford, Staffordshire,
Eng.
died Dec. 15, 1683, Winchester, Hampshire
English biographer and author of The Compleat
Angler (1653), a pastoral discourse on the joys
and stratagems of fishing that has been one of
the most frequently reprinted books in English
literature.
After a few years of schooling, Walton was
apprenticed to a kinsman in the linendrapers’
trade in London, where he acquired a small shop
of his own and began to prosper. Despite his
modest education he read widely, developed
scholarly tastes, and associated with men of
learning. Walton lived and worked close to St.
Dunstan’s Church, and he became active in parish
affairs and a friend and fishing companion of
the vicar, John Donne. Donne died in 1631, and,
when his poems were published two years later,
Walton composed “An Elegie” for the volume. In
1640 he wrote The Life and Death of Dr. Donne to
accompany a collection of Donne’s sermons. The
Life was revised and enlarged in 1658.
During the Civil Wars, Walton, a staunch
Royalist, quit London for the relative security
of his native Staffordshire. After the Royalist
defeat at Worcester in 1651, he took part in a
successful adventure to preserve a jewel
belonging to Charles II. He spent the remainder
of his life reading, writing and editing,
fishing, and visiting among the eminent
clergymen who were his friends.
The second of Walton’s biographies, The Life
of Sir Henry Wotton (provost of Eton), appeared
in 1651. Two years later the work that made
Walton immortal, The Compleat Angler, or, the
Contemplative Man’s Recreation, was published.
Walton enlarged and improved the work through
four subsequent editions, a quest for perfection
also evident in repeated revisions of the
biographies. He wrote The Life of Mr. Richard
Hooker, the Elizabethan bishop, in 1665 and
revised it the next year. In 1670 he issued The
Life of Mr. George Herbert, the poet, and in the
same year he brought out an edition containing
all four lives.
Upon the Restoration, one of Walton’s
Royalist friends, George Morley, was made bishop
of Winchester and offered Walton residence in
the bishop’s palace, where he stayed for the
rest of his life. His final personal revision
(the fifth edition) of The Compleat Angler
appeared in 1676 and included additional
material written by his friend Charles Cotton.
Walton published a biography of Bishop Sanderson
in 1678.
Since the late 18th century, more than 300
editions of The Compleat Angler have appeared,
and the unpretentious treatise, of which Walton
did not even claim authorship on its first
appearance, became a household word. Many of its
devotees have been fishermen, but Walton’s
attractive style in dialogue and description,
his enthusiasm for innocent outdoor recreation,
and his genial partiality for the past have
lifted The Compleat Angler out of the category
of handbooks into that of the pastoral. The book
opens on the first day of May, as three
sportsmen—Auceps the fowler, Venator the hunter,
and Piscator the fisherman—compare their
favoured pastimes while traveling through the
English countryside along the River Lea. The
discourse is enlivened by songs and poems,
country folklore, recipes, anecdotes, moral
meditations, quotes from the Bible and from
classic literature, and lore about fishing and
waterways. The central character, Piscator, is
not simply a champion and expositor of the art
of angling but a man of tranquil, contented
temper, pious and sententious, with a relish for
the pleasures of friendship, verse and song,
good food, and drink.
