The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques & discoveries of the English nation made by sea or over-land to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1600 yeeres

by Richard Hakluyt, 1552?-1616.

Book, 1903

Status

Available

Call number

G240.H2 1904 v.11 SPEC

Publication

Publisher Unknown

Description

The Principal Navigations - Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation - Collected by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher and Edited by Edmund Goldsmid. Richard Hakluyt (1553 - 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the British colonisation of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589-1600). Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. Between 1583 and 1588 he was chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, English ambassador at the French court. An ordained priest, Hakluyt held important positions at Bristol Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and was personal chaplain to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, principal Secretary of State to Elizabeth I and James I. He was the chief promoter of a petition to James I for letters patent to colonize Virginia, which were granted to the London Company and Plymouth Company (referred to collectively as the Virginia Company) in 1606. The Hakluyt Society publishes scholarly editions of primary records of voyages and travels. "This elaborate and excellent Collection, which redounds as much to the glory of the English Nation as any book that ever was published, has already had sufficient complaints made in its behalf against our suffering it to become so scarce and obscure, by neglecting to republish it in a fair impression, with proper illustrations and especially an Index. But there may still be room left for a favourable construction of such neglect, and the hope that nothing but the casual scarcity of a work so long since out of print may have prevented its falling into those able hands that might, by such an edition, have rewarded the eminent Examples preserved therein, the Collector thereof and themselves according to their deserts."Thus wrote Oldys (The British Librarian, No III, March, 1737, page 137), nearly 150. years ago, and what has been done to remove this, reproach? The work has become so rare that even a reckless expenditure of money cannot procure a copy.… (more)

Media reviews

The Wheatley Medal, which is awarded annually on the recommendation of a joint committee of the Library Association and the Society of Indexers for an outstanding index published in the preceding year, was awarded for 1965 to Mrs. Alison Quinn for her index to The principall navigations voiages and
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discoveries of the English nation by Richard Hakluyt.This edition is a photo-lithographic facsimile published for the Hakluyt Society and the Peabody Museum of Salem at the University Press, Cambridge (10 gns.). The original was published in 1589 and has never been reprinted, and might well have remained available only to scholars but for the development of modern methods of photographic reproduction. This edition, in two volumes (including the index), in addition to the facsimile reproduction of the original text in the black-letter type, has an introduction, in modern type, by Professor Quinn and Mr. R. A. Skelton, and a remarkable index, also in modern type, by Mrs. Alison Quinn. The index covers all the material in the Elizabethan text (835 pages) and in the Introduction (52 pages) and itself occupies 140 pages. It appears, at first sight, to be a single index arranged in the usual alphabetical order. But closer inspection reveals that it is constructed on a most ingenious plan, reminiscent of the well-known Chinese box. Mrs. Quinn's index is an analysis that combines with the analytic framework a large number of subsidiary indexes, each one of which constitutes a review of all the material in the text dealing with its special subject. Mrs. Quinn cross-refers from cloak to clothing, and sometimes takes it still further as when, for instance, she cross-refers from cloth to commodities. The entry under commodities occupies more than 17 columns (nearly six pages in the index) and constitutes a complete survey, in alphabetical order, of all the commodities mentioned by Hakluyt and thus of virtually all the commodities known to the Elizabethans. Such an arrangement, combining synthesis within analysis, is perfect for this special text which is one of the more famous works of Elizabethan history and literature and, as such, a source book for scholars, writers, scientists, thinkers and journalists everywhere in the world. Mrs. Quinn was dealing with barely accessible material, as far as the ordinary reader is concerned; and her index is outstanding for the intelligent, imaginative, and scholarly way in which she has solved the intractable problems such material must inevitably present to the indexer.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member amerynth
Incredibly dry..... I'm surprised that this is not only on the list of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time but also that it is ranked higher than Arlene Blum's "Anapurna" and William Bligh's "Mutiny on the Bounty." While this novel was said to inspire the English to explore the high seas,
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it only inspired me to sleep.
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Original publication date

1600

Barcode

34662000559085

Other editions

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