Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of 24 essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. Best known as editor of The Principal Navigations (1589; expanded 1598-1600), Hakluyt was a key figure in promoting English colonial and commercial expansion in the early modern period. He also translated major European travel texts, championed English settlement in North America, and promoted global trade and exploration via a Northeast and Northwest Passage. His work spanned every area of English activity and aspiration, from Muscovy to America, from Africa to the Near East, and India to China and Japan, providing up-to-date information and establishing an ideological framework for English rivalries with Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. This volume resituates Hakluyt in the political, economic, and intellectual context of his time. The genre of the travel collection to which he contributed emerged from Continental humanist literary culture. Hakluyt adapted this tradition for nationalistic purposes by locating a purported history of 'English' enterprise that stretched as far back as he could go in recovering antiquarian records. The essays in this collection advance the study of Hakluyt's literary and historical resources, his international connections, and his rhetorical and editorial practice. The volume is divided into 5 sections: 'Hakluyt's Contexts'; 'Early Modern Travel Writing Collections'; 'Editorial Practice'; 'Allegiances and Ideologies: Politics, Religion, Nation'; and 'Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing'. The volume concludes with an account of the formation and ethos of the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, which has continued his project to edit travel accounts of trade, exploration, and adventure.
Classified as 'Research Essential' by Baker & Taylor YBP Library Services 'The collection will be of interest to any scholar of Hakluyt, Elizabethan voyagers and early modern travel writing, and those interested in the history of textual editing in the renaissance and the prehistory of anthropology will find it useful as well.' The Mariner's Mirror 'Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe gives us twenty-four new essays by the key figures in the new generation of Hakluyt scholarship from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds... [it] depicts a Hakluyt who is far more a Renaissance humanist in the ways in which he worked within a genre and in his editorial practices, in his ambivalences around religion and nationalism, in his seamless interweaving of commerce, religion, and politics, than Helgerson and Armitage suggest. This in itself is an important contribution to our understanding of British political, imperial, and geographical thought in the age of Elizabeth.' The Journal of Historical Geography '... the volume represents a landmark in scholarly engagement with Hakluyt's work... this wide-ranging and coherently edited collection will be an essential starting point for those interested in understanding and interpreting the text. Its focus on the literary and textual nicely complements an earlier collection edited by David B. Quinn, while opening up new avenues of scholarship and critical interpretation.' International Journal of Maritime History 'Carey and Jowitt's edited collection of twenty four original essays from an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars heralds a new phase for the most important primary source on English travel, trade, and colonialism in the early modern period... What it provides, so compellingly, is a nuanced framework for reassessing Hakluyt as a writer, compiler, and advisor...' Renaissance Quarterly '... this collection of diverse contributions makes a major and very welcome step forward in
