The Compleat Angler Paperback -

From the publisher

The Compleat Angler (the spelling is sometimes modernised to The Complete Angler) is a book by Izaak Walton. It was first published in 1653 by Richard Marriot of St Dunstan-in-the-West, London. Walton continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. It is a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse. To all Readers of this discourse, but especially to the honest Angler. I think fit to tell thee these following truths; that I did neither undertake, nor write, nor publish, and much less own, this Discourse to please myself: and, having been too easily drawn to do all to please others, as I propose not the gaining of credit by this undertaking, so I would not willingly lose any part of that to which I had a just title before I began it; and do therefore desire and hope, if I deserve not commendations, yet I may obtain pardon. Walton was born in Stafford and moved to London when he was in his teens. The book was dedicated to John Offley of Madeley, Staffordshire, and there are references in the book to fishing in the English Midlands. However, the work begins with Londoners making a fishing trip to the Lea Valley in Hertfordshire. The first edition featured dialogue between veteran angler "Piscator" and student "Viator," while later editions change Viator to hunter Venator and added falconer Auceps. Walton drew on an earlier work. 6 verses were quoted from John Dennys's 1613 work The Secrets of Angling. There were a number of editions during the author's lifetime. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661 (identical with that of 1664), a fourth in 1668, and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition, the thirteen chapters of the original had grown to twenty-one, and a second part was added by his friend and brother angler Charles Cotton, who took up Venator, where Walton had left him and completed his instruction in fly fishing and the making of flies.