1675 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON

Walton, Izaak. THE LIVES OF DR. JOHN DONNE, SIR HENRY WOTTON, MR. RICHARD HOOKER, MR. GEORGE HERBERT.

“This collection of biographies is one of the most celebrated in the English language” — Pforzheimer catalogue (for 1670 ed.).

Forth edition and Second edition of the collected Lives. Fine copperplate portraits of the subjects.

This edition calls itself the fourth because it contains the fourth editions of the lives of Donne and Hooker.
Presentation copy inscribed by Walton on the recto of the portrait “for Mrs Neidham”
Signed "W.P. Thackray-1806" on title page, and with a transcript of a John Donne letter in an unidentified early hand, "taken from the Original written in Izaak Walton's own book of Dr. Donne's Sermons sent him by Mr. Donne, now in possession of A. Borradale."

His leisurely labors as a biographer seem to have grown out of his devotion to angling.

It was probably as an angler that he made the acquaintance of Sir Henry Wotton, but it is clear that Walton had more than a love of fishing and a humorous temper to recommend him to the friendship of the accomplished ambassador.

At any rate, Wotton, who had intended to write the life of John Donne, and had already corresponded with Walton on the subject, left the task to him. Walton had already contributed an elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne's poems, and he completed and published the life, much to the satisfaction of the most learned critics, in 1640.

Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton undertook his life also; it was finished in 1642 and published in 1651 as a preface to the volume Reliquiae Wottonianae.

His life of Hooker was published in 1665, and his biography of George Herbert in 1670, the latter coinciding with a collected edition of Walton's biographical writings, The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert (1670, 1675).

His life of Bishop Robert Sanderson appeared in 1678. All these subjects were endeared to the biographer by a certain gentleness of disposition and cheerful piety; three of them at least—Donne, Wotton and Herbert—were anglers. Walton studied these men's lives in detail and provides many insights into their character.

Walton also made significant contributions to seventeenth-century life-writing throughout his career.