Izaak Walton
English author and biographer (1593-1683)
Izaak Walton (baptised 21 September 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler (1653), he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend John Donne. They have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.
Born at Stafford around 1593, Walton moved to London in his teens, where he worked as a linen draper. In the capital, he befriended the poet and clergyman John Donne. A Royalist during the English Civil War, Walton returned to his home county of Staffordshire, settling at Shallowford, following the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor in 1644. Though Walton had returned to London by 1650, his experiences at Shallowford provided material for The Compleat Angler: a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing, first published in 1653. Throughout his life, Walton published biographies of subjects including Donne and Henry Wotton. These were later collected as Walton's Lives.
Walton's literary admirers have included Charles Lamb and he gives his name to places and organisations in his native country, the United States, and Kenya.
“Izaak Walton” enters the record as english author and biographer (1593-1683). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Izaak, Walton and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q562133. VIAF identifies the subject as 73863052. The Library of Congress control number is n50026466. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1593, 1683, 1653 and 1644.
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This entry incorporates text from “Izaak Walton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.