Waltoniana: Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton

Beyond the pastoral serenity of The Complete Angler lies a richer, more complicated Izaak Walton. This collection gathers verse and prose written across five decades, revealing a writer deeply embedded in the literary and spiritual life of 17th-century England. The book opens with an elegy for John Donne, Walton's meditation on the death of the poet who had once been his friend and collaborator, among the most intimate surviving portraits of Donne in his final years. Here too are verses celebrating fellow scholars, prefaces to friends' works, letters brimful of affectionate erudition, and meditations on mortality and friendship that unfold with quiet, Tudor-aged gravity. What emerges is not merely a supplement to The Complete Angler but a counterweight: a portrait of Walton as a literary networker, a grieving friend, and a writer whose piety and wit were inseparable. For readers who have loved his paean to rivers and roach, Waltoniana offers the deeper pleasure of knowing the man who cast those lines.