SOURCE: Granqvist, Raoul. “Izaak Walton's Lives in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century: A Study of a Cult Object,” in Studia Neophilologica, 54, No. 2 (1982): 247-61.

In the essay below, Granqvist traces the way in which 19th-century intellectual trends shaped the interpretation of Walton and his writings.

Biography in the early nineteenth century was a thriving business. The improved printing facilities, the extension of literacy, and the Sunday school movement were factors that originated and inspired mass production of biographies. The attention paid to biography was widespread and generous. Obscure semi-celebrities, poets, smugglers, peddlers, maniacs, curates, (even animals) were commemorated side by side with famous men such as Pitt the Elder, Wesley, Voltaire, Goldsmith. The purpose behind all this was to commend lives that were thought to be worthy of emulation and condemn unprofitable lives. Much of this literature is worthless; some of it repugnant. Joseph W. Reed says...