Izaak Walton (1593-1683) was born in Stafford and became a London ironmonger and tradesman in Fleet Street and Chancery Lane, where he was a parishioner and friend of John Donne at St Dunstan's-in-the-West. He is best known for The Compleat Angler (1653), but he also wrote five short lives of churchmen and scholars: Donne (1640), Sir Henry Wotton (1651), Richard Hooker (1665), George Herbert (1670) and Robert Sanderson (1678). A loyal member of the Church of England through the Civil War and Commonwealth, he spent his later years in the household of his friend George Morley, Bishop of Winchester, and died at Winchester in 1683.
Frequently Cited
“it was the Odes of Horace,--he being then like humble and innocent Abel, tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field”
“a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master: in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.”
Izaak Walton's Lives are short, affectionate biographies of English churchmen, written by a London tradesman and angler who loved the Church of England and the men who served it. The library text is the second volume of the Cassell's National Library edition of 1898, based on John Major's 1825 edition with Austin Dobson's notes, and contains three of the five lives: Richard Hooker (first published 1665), George Herbert (1670) and Robert Sanderson (1678); the lives of Donne and Wotton belong to the first volume and are not included.
