Isaac Walton

August 9, 1593 to December 15, 1683

Modern angling’s debt to Isaac Walton is incalculable. His The Compleat Angler was first published in 1653 and in four progressively larger editions before his death at age 90. It stands as the only fishing book among

the classics of English Literature. Its hundreds of later reprintings rank it and very few other works behind only the Bible and the works of Shakespeare among English-language books. Though among the finest angling books of its age, the book has long been even more celebrated as a masterly pastoral idyll, a pioneering expression of environmental conscience, and at all times an unmatched exemplar of what we now regard as the foremost Waltonian sentiment, that the angler should “study to be quiet.” Walton capped his literary legacy by including, the final edition of the Compleat Angler to be published during his life (1676), his dear friend and fishing companion Charles Cotton’s milestone “Being Instructions how to angle for trout or grayling in a clear stream.” Largely devoted to fly fishing—of which Cotton was a master—this essay itself survived for centuries for its instructional values, as well as an additional testament to the joys and rewards of fly fishing—thus making Walton’s imperishable book just that much more complete.