Izaak Walton - Biography

Biography

Walton was born at Stafford; the register of his baptism gives his father's name as Gervase. His father, who was an innkeeper as well as a landlord of a tavern, died before Izaak was three. His mother then married another innkeeper by the name of Bourne, who would later run the Swan in Stafford.

He settled in London where he began trading as an ironmonger in a small shop in the upper story of Thomas Gresham's Royal Burse or Exchange in Cornhill. In 1614 he had a shop in Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane in the parish of St Dunstan's. At about this time he became friendly with Dr John Donne, then vicar of the parish church.

Walton's first wife was Victoria Ramano (married December 1626), a great-great-niece of Archbishop Cranmer. She died in 1640. He married again soon after, his second wife being Anne Ken (1646–1662); the pastoral Kenna of The Angler's Wish; stepsister of Thomas Ken, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.

After the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor in 1644, Walton retired from his trade. He went to live just north of his birthplace, at a spot between the town of Stafford and the town of Stone, where he had bought some land edged by a small river. His new land at Shallowford (now the Izaak Walton Cottage Museum) included a farm, and a parcel of land. But by 1650 he was again living in Clerkenwell, London. The first edition of his famous book The Compleat Angler was published in 1653. His second wife died in 1662, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where there is a monument to her memory. One of his daughters married Dr Hawkins, a prebendary of Winchester.

Read more about this topic:  Izaak Walton

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.
    Richard Holmes (b. 1945)

    Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.
    James Boswell (1740–95)

    There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)