Izaak Walton - Walton in Literature

Walton in Literature

Walton has appeared in several works of literature:

• Charles Lamb, in his letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recommends Walton's Compleat Angler: "It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of the heart. There are many choice old verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise every discordant angry passion; pray make yourself acquainted with it."

• Charles Dickens uses the name Izaak Walton in A Tale of Two Cities to develop an extended metaphor comparing Jerry Cruncher's night-time "occupation" of grave robbing to fishing.

• Washington Irving's humorous essay "The Angler" comments on Walton's popularity; the work can be found in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon available via Project Gutenberg.

• Walton is mentioned in Jules Verne's classic The Mysterious Island when the castaways decide to use snares to catch birds: "He took Herbert to some distance from the nests, and there prepared his singular apparatus with all the care which a disciple of Izaak Walton would have used."

• Walton is also the protagonist of Howard Waldrop's short story "God's Hooks!" (1982).

• In the best selling semi-autobiographical novel The River Why (1983) by David James Duncan, The Compleat Angler serves as the most revered book in the irreverent fly fisherman Gus Orviston's childhood home, his parents quoting and misquoting the treatise to obsessively argue their respective sides of the artificial fly versus natural bait controversy.

• Walton appears as "Piscator" in the novel Silverlock by John Myers Myers and under his own name in the novel Conceit by Mary Novik.

• Walton comes under fire in Norman Maclean's short story A River Runs Through It, later filmed under the same name.

• Ben Bova has a character named "Isaac Walton" in The Precipice, first book of the Asteroid Wars, of whom it is joked that he came to the Moon to escape fishing jokes.

• Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History has the character Bunny erroneously closely linking Walton and John Donne in his imaginary belief in "metahemeralism".

• Gilbert Ryle uses him in his 1949 book The Concept of Mind as an example of "'knowing how' before 'knowing that'".

• The Hardy Boys Book 40, The Mystery Of The Desert Giant, Joe makes a sarcastic comment referring to Frank as Izaak Walton while the boys are fishing.

• Zane Grey uses the name Izaak Walton in Betty Zane (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1903) in a fishing story: Alfred Clarke said "I never knew one (girl) who cared for fishing." Betty Zane answered, "Now you behold one. I love dear old Izaak Walton. Of course you (Clarke) have read his books?"

• Jess Mowry mentions Izaak Walton in his novel, Knights Crossing when an educated slave describes his master as "a disciple of Izaak Walton."