“God did never make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling,” wrote Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler, published in 1676. Though written in the archaic English of the mid 1600’s, The Compleat Angler remains one of the most reprinted books in the English language. The book opens to three men meeting on a road who stop and compare their chosen sports – Auceps the falconer, Venator the hunter, and Piscator the fisherman (a fictionalized version of Izaak Walton). The falconer goes on his way but the fisherman begins to mentor the hunter in the art of fishing and appreciation of the natural world around them. By the end of the book, Venator the hunter declares, "I have only lived since I turned Angler and not before."
A new edition of The Compleat Angler was released in 2014 by Oxford University Press. The edition's editor, Professor Marjorie Swann, shared her thoughts on the book with the Izaak Walton League, namesake of the author and one of America’s oldest conservation organizations.
“This Obscure Fishing Book is One of the Most Reprinted English Books Ever.” Smithsonian Magazine Smart News