Cotton Grass Theatre - Izaac Walton Biography

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The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man's Recreation has not been out of print for over 350 years.

The book was first published in May 1653

A second revised and extended edition appeared two years later

and it was-issued a further three times in Izaak Walton's lifetime.

This much-loved text has endured because it is about so much more than fishing.

The first part of the book was written at the height of the English Civil.

Izaak Walton writes about the redemptive power of nature in troubled times.

His concerns about over-fishing and the size

of holes in fishing nets echoes our contemporary concerns about conservation.

Sometimes his observations on nature seem bizarre:

the growing of geese in trees and the breeding of pike but he also questions them.

This is a world on the verge of contemporary science and enquiry.

It is not so very far from our own.

Link to the original text of The Compleat Angler

IZAAK WALTON 1593 to 1683

Izaak Walton was recognized in his own lifetime as a biographer. The son of a Stafford alehouse keeper,

Walton probably attended the town's grammar school before taking up an apprenticeship in London

with his wealthy brother-in-law.

By 1624 he had his own business as a linen draper in Fleet Street.

Walton was married twice. Seven children from the first marriage died in infancy,

but a further three children from his second marriage survived into adulthood.

His son became canon of Salisbury Cathedral and one of his daughters

married the canon of Winchester Cathedral. Walton's small farm in Shallowford,

originally left to his native town of Stafford, was restored and reopened as a museum

by the Izaak Walton Cottage Trust in 1924.

He is buried in the Prior Silkstead Chapel at Winchester Cathedral.

This is his epitaph:

Here resteth the Body of Mr. ISAAC WALTON
Who dyed the 15th day of December 1683
Alas he's gone before Gone to return no more!
Our panting Breasts aspire
After their aged Sire,
Whose well spent life did last,
Full ninety years and past
But now he hath begun That which will ne'er be done
Crown'd with eternal blysse:
We wish our souls with his.
Votis modesties sic flerunt liberi

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