The English writer and biographer Izaak Walton (1593-1683) was the author of The Compleat Angler. His works show him to have been a kindly and religious man with a quiet sense of humor and rare common sense.

Izaak Walton was born at Stafford on Aug. 9, 1593. Little is known of his childhood and early youth. By 1624 he was established in London as a cloth merchant after a period of apprenticeship, perhaps to his uncle, a haberdasher. Walton's shop was located in St. Dunstan's parish, and he became acquainted with John Donne, who was then vicar. In 1626 Walton married Rachel Floud, a great-grandniece of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. She died in 1640.

That same year Walton's first literary work, a life of Donne, was published. Donne had died in 1631, and a mutual friend, Sir Henry Wotton, had asked Walton to collect material for a life he was writing to preface an edition...