page_title: John Dennys
section_title: The Secrets of Angling
hierarchical_section_title: John Dennys / The Secrets of Angling
caption_attribution_description: The River Boyd, near Doynton
context_page_description: John Dennys, a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare.
context_section_description: His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. In it he wrote of a brook, River Boyd, formed from streams in his hometown of Pucklechurch, which met downstream with the River Avon:
  And thou, sweet Boyd, that with thy watry sway,
  Dost wash the cliffs of Deignton and of Weeke;
  And through their Rockes with crooked winding way,
  Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seeke;
  In whose fayre streames the speckled Trout doth play.
  It was first published in 1613. Dennys's book was published after his death, the author identified by the initials J.D., and had been attributed to up to 6 poets. In 1811 the authorship was determined from Stationers' Registers, which showed that Dennys authored the book.
  A didactic pastoral poem in 3 books, totalling 151 verses each of 8 lines, in the style of Virgil's Georgics, it was published in 4 editions until 1652, examples of which are amongst the rarest books in existence. Verses from the book have been quoted in other works, such as Izaak Walton in the first part of the first chapter of his 1653 edition of The Compleat Angler.
  Dennys received at the hand of Thomas Westwood (1814–1888), the epithet "The Fisherman's Glorious John". The appellation was received from Walter Scott.
caption: The River Boyd at Doynton
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