SOURCE: Marston, R. B. “Introductory.” In Walton and Some Earlier Writers on Fish and Fishing. London: Elliot Stock, 1894.

In the essay which follows, Marston relates his affection for Walton's Compleat Angler and considers its importance among texts about fishing.

Have you read The Compleat Angler? If you have, and are also acquainted with the Author's other writings, then these pages may perchance refresh your remembrance of them; but their object and the hope of the writer is to make Walton and a few earlier angling writers known to some to whom they are only names.

Looking back through a life, a never-failing delight of which has been the devouring of books, I confess that not many have had such an enduring charm for me as those of Walton. His Compleat Angler is the first book I can remember reading. I have the edition before me now, one of...