Izaak Walton

The Complete Angler - Or, the Comtemplative Man's Recreation Izaak Walton

Publisher Marketing: PREFACE, WALTOX Complete Angler ranks, by common consent, among the choicest morsels of our early literature, not as a mere manual of the piscatorial art, but as a work of imagination and truth, full of fine sentiment and virtuous precepts. Many of our best writers-Sir Walter Scott, Sheridan, Hallam, Washington bring, Miss Mitford-have rung its praises and Charles Lamb says, that it would sweeten a mans temper at any time to read it, and Christianise every discordant passion. It is, therefore, no matter of surprise that the demand for this beautiful pastoral is coltinuoua, and that there are so many editions of it before the public indeed so many, and some recent, that it would at first view almost seem superfluols to add to their number. But the publisher placed before me such a valuable store of materials, the accumulation of years, that it was quite evident the proposed edition would surpass all its predecessors, and be a great boon to the public I therefore willingly undertook a task every way congenial to my tastes and feelings. If a full appreciation of the piety and virtues of the Author, his honest simplicity of mind, his pure taste for the beautiful in nature, and his pleasing eloquence, were alone sufficient to qualify an editor of his immortal work, I should yield to no one but other qualifications are requisite, and I must leave the reader to determine how far they are exemplified in the volume before him. The two centuries which have elapsed since the first edition of tbe Complete Angler, have occasioned the necessity of many historical illustrations, several corrections of erroneous notions in matters of natural history, and large additions on the practice of angling. These have been collected from every available source, as will be seen by the numerous authorities quoted. Indeed, it has been endeavoured to combine all the advantages of preceding editions in the present. The notes of Sir John Hawkins have been taken bodily, excepting in some instances where they had become obsolete, or superseded and the notes of Browne, Rennie, Bagster, Sir Henry Ellis, Sir Harris Nicolas, and others, have been culled to supply whatever could add to the interest or instructiveness of the volume, must we omit mention of the American editor, whose edition, printed at New York in 1847, though deficient in graphic illustration, is in the way of annotation more complete than any produced in this country up to its date. The notes, however, being principally from common sources, have not been of the use to us that the merit of the edition would imply. The Complete Angler seems to have been an especial favourite of booksellers, and has had the good fortune to find no fewer than six foster-fathers among them. Indeed, nearly all the editions which have appeared during the last half century are more or less indebted to them. Bagster a practical angler led the way in 1808, with an improved edition of Sir John Hawkins, edited by himself this he republished in 1815, with additions of his own, and some by Sir Henry Ellis. Mr. Thomas Gosden, a devoted angler, published, and we believe edited, the edition of 1822, for which he also arranged the illustrations, and designed patterns for the binding. Air... Contributor Bio:  Walton, Izaak Izaak Walton (c. 1594 - 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies that have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives. Walton was born at Stafford, c. 1594; the traditional '9 August 1593' date is based on a misinterpretation of his will, which he began on 9 August 1683. The register of his baptism gives his father's name as Gervase. His father, who was an innkeeper as well as a landlord of a tavern, died before Izaak was three. His mother then married another innkeeper by the name of Bourne, who would later run the Swan in Stafford. He settled in London where he began trading as an ironmonger in a small shop in the upper story of Thomas Gresham's Royal Burse or Exchange in Cornhill. In 1614 he had a shop in Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane in the parish of St Dunstan's. He became verger and churchwarden of the church, and a friend of the vicar, John Donne. He joined the Ironmongers' Company in November 1618. Walton's first wife was Rachel Floud (married December 1626), a great-great-niece of Archbishop Cranmer. She died in 1640. He soon remarried, to Anne Ken (1646-1662), who appears as the pastoral Kenna of The Angler's Wish; she was a stepsister of Thomas Ken, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.