H akluyt, R ichard

Abstract

Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616) is best known for his role in the collection, dissemination, and publication of travel narratives and documents of the early modern period. Though not the first to publish a collection of such writings in English, The principall navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation (1589) was the most important early modern travel compilation, particularly in its much‐enlarged second edition, The principal navigations, voiages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation (1598–1600). These two editions preserved texts which would otherwise be lost and were seminal examples of a genre which became immensely popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hakluyt's contribution to the publication of travel writing, however, was not restricted to these two editions.