Izaak Walton, one of the earliest English biographers, is best remembered as the author of The Compleat Angler. In 1676 Walton asked a young follower, the poet Charles Cotton, to furnish a supplement on fly-fishing for the fifth edition of the book, a project that the two pursued at a cottage on the banks of the Dove River in Derbyshire.

Charles Cotton (1630-1687) was a country gentleman, poet, and translator, who built a fishing house for himself and Izaak Walton at his birthplace, Beresford Hall in Staffordshire. In 1676, at Walton's invitation, he wrote the second part to The Compleat Angler.

Before stepping down in 2003, Howell Raines was executive editor of The New York Times. He is the author of Whiskey Man, a novel, and My Soul Is Rested, an oral history of the Civil Rights movement. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1992.