The Compleat Angler cover art

The Compleat Angler

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Compleat Angler

By: Izaak Walton
Narrated by: Alex Warner
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

The Complete Angler has been in print for over 350 years. Just a how-to book on fishing would not have created such a popular work. Walton's comments on how to catch and prepare numerous varieties of fish create a pleasant leisure read for any fisherman. His anecdotes are as fresh and contemporary today as they were in his century.

Public Domain (P)2010 Audible, Inc. European Fishing Hunting & Fishing Literary History & Criticism Outdoors & Nature World Literature

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Gargantua & Pantagruel (Classic Serial) cover art
Birds in Town and Village cover art
The Miller's Tale cover art
Nonsense Verse cover art
The Canterbury Tales: The Pardoner's Tale (Modern Verse Translation) cover art
Songs of Jamaica cover art
Poor Richard's Almanack cover art
Robert Browning: Selected Poems cover art
The Divine Magnet cover art
Peter Pan cover art
The Swiss Family Robinson cover art
Jabberwocky cover art
England, Our England cover art
Timon of Athens cover art
The Water-Babies cover art
A Midsummer Night's Dream cover art

Editor reviews

Before there was Norman McLean's A River Runs Through It, there was Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler. The subtitle of Walton's classic 17th-century "discourse" on fish and fishing is "The Contemplative Man's Recreation", and for good reason. At turns mirthful, lofty, poetic, and didactic, Angler is a marvelous mixture of instruction manual, dialogue, and work of art.

The audiobook requires a classic British voice, and Alex Warner delivers with a pitch-perfect performance. His noble accent seems to emerge from centuries past, and a listener has never heard a more genteel voice discuss frogs and worms with utter earnestness.

Critic reviews

First published in 1653, Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler celebrates the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse. Walton infused his work with anecdotes and commentaries on catching and preparing everything from carp to trout, chub to pike. This modern Ecco Press edition is enhanced with a new introduction by Thomas McGuane and illustrations by Arthur Rackham. The Compleat Angler is as fresh and relevant today as it was two and a half centuries ago. The Compleat Angler continues to be "must" reading for every new generation of fishermen (and fisher women!) who have ever picked up a pole, line and lure to set forth on one of human kind's oldest pastimes -- fishing. ( Midwest Book Review)
All stars
Most relevant
A wonderful book. Thoughtful and so elegantly spoken. Whether you are an avid fisherman or a enjoy the outdoors and appreciate the friendship of good companions which shines out from every page of the book - I would recommend you give it a listen. It is absolutely amazing that the book was originally written over 350 years ago.

The joy of fishing is eternal through the ages

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Walton constantly repeats the Latin words "piscator" and "venator" ( fisher and hunter) and the reader consistently mispronounced them. Shameful.

Did no one think of finding out pronounciation?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.