13 Facts About Charles Cotton

Charles Cotton was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from French, for his contributions to The Compleat Angler, and for the influential The Compleat Gamester attributed to him.

Charles Cotton was born in Alstonefield, Staffordshire, at Beresford Hall, near the Derbyshire Peak District.

Charles Cotton's father, Charles Cotton the Elder, was a friend of Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak Walton.

Walton's initials, made into a cipher with Charles Cotton's own, were placed over the door of Charles Cotton's fishing cottage on the Dove near Hartington.

Charles Cotton contributed a second section "Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream", to Walton's The Compleat Angler; the additions consisted of twelve chapters on fishing in clear water, which he understood largely but not exclusively to be fly fishing.

John Hutchinson; They had one child, Catherine Charles Cotton, who married Sir Berkeley Lucy, 3rd Baronet.

Charles Cotton was a Derbyshire man who loved the Peak District and wrote a long topographic poem describing it: his father had moved there from the south of England, to live on his wife's estates.

Some of Charles Cotton's advice is still useful, as when he tells his guest to fish "fine and far off"; and he argues for small and neat flies, carefully dressed, over the bushy productions of London tackle-dealers.

Charles Cotton's dressings are made with bear hair and camel's under fur, the soft bristles from inside a black hog's ear, and from dog's tails.

Charles Cotton devotes a whole chapter to collection of flies for every month of the year.

Charles Cotton's Derbyshire is more remote from modern England, and closer to the wilderness than Montana or Alaska are now.

Charles Cotton is quite unashamed of bait fishing, whether with flies or with grubs.

Charles Cotton loved nothing more than that his friends should share his delight.