David Novarr
The Making of Walton's "Lives".
Cornell University Press, 1958. Cornell Studies in English, Volume XLI. First edition. xvi/527 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in dark blue cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine and front cover. Book is in fine condition, with firm binding, clean and bright interior.
Laid in are a typed letter to the author from the chairman of the English Department at Cornell University, Ephim G. Fogel, dated 2/1967, as well as a handwritten note by the same, dated 2/1968, both relating to the sales of this title.
"For three centuries the name of Izaak Walton has been synonymous with angling. He has become the patron saint of fishermen, and fishermen have found him a most useful saint. The "Compleat Angler" has suffused its charm over the fishermen's recreation, and the veneration that Walton has ever inspired has redounded to the fishermen's credit. Walton wished to persuade men to contemplation and harmlessness and piety; "Study to be quiet," he wrote. His book has served, instead, to make the Sabbath the day of the greatest activity for the Leagues which bear his name...My interest here is in Walton as a biographer. I had originally planned to write a critical study in biographic technique, based largely on a structural analysis of the "Lives," on Walton's use of his sources, and on a collation of the editions of each "Life." Walton's changes and additions would clearly reveal his craftsmanship, I thought, and, incidentally, would demonstrate the shifts of opinion which time and new information might be expected to cause. The results of this study are here, and something more. I soon saw that it was not fruitful to talk of methodology apart from context, that an understanding of Walton as biographer was often less dependent upon his techniques than upon the comprehension of the purposes for which he wrote a life and upon the circumstances under which he wrote it. These matters, too, I have had to investigate." (from preface)