The hakluyt society, whose function is the editing and publication of the records of exploration, has now largely made good the arrears in publication due to conditions in the printing trade in the post-war years and to delays in the comple? tion of editorial work. It is anticipated that four works will appear before the end of this year, a considerable achievement due very largely to the energy and scholarship of the Society's Honorary Secretary, Mr. R. A. Skelton. This achievement is all the more notable since in the same period two volumes and a portfolio of plates of the definitive edition of Captain James Cook's Journals of his three voyages of explora? tion have also appeared in the Society's extra series. Since this also coincides with certain changes in the organization of the Society, due to Mr. Skelton's inability to continue as Honorary Secretary single-handed, this is an appropriate occasion to view the Society's work in retrospect. The Hakluyt Society was founded in 1846, with the declared object of printing 'rare and valuable Voyages, Travels, Naval Expeditions and other geographical records'. The founders included several prominent officers of the Royal Geo? graphical Society and it is probable that, had the R.G.S. then been in a more flourishing state, it would have undertaken this work itself. However that may be, there has always been close cooperation between officers of the British Museum and the R.G.S. in the work of the Hakluyt Society, and the R.G.S. has an official representative on its Council which meets in the R.G.S. building. Membership is open to all interested for the reasonable subscription of two guineas a year. The Society has now published 100 volumes in its first series (1846-1900) and 117 volumes in the second series, and complete sets now command an extremely high price. Periodically, the Council have set a limit of time on the narratives to be published, but recently this restriction has very sensibly been abandoned, and volumes dealing with nineteenth century travel have recently been published. The scope of its publications has always been wide, but inevitably, as other publishing Societies with special interests, often modelled upon it, have come into existence, such as the Champlain Society of Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company Record Society and the Linschoten Vereeniging of the Netherlands, it has tended to concentrate on particular fields. As would be expected, the earliest volumes dealt with Tudor voyages and colonizing enterprises. It was, in fact, intended that the first volume to be published should be, appropriately enough, Hakluyt's Divers Voyages of 1582, but for various reasons this did not appear for several years, under the editorship of J. Winter Jones. Because of special contemporary interest, voyages in search of the North-east and North-west Passages were also prominent. Very soon, however, the interest spread to India and other Asian countries and, with the advent of Clements Markham, South America came to be strongly represented. (Incidentally Markham's first volume appeared in 1859 and his last in 1923.) The first volume devoted speci? fically to Africa appeared in 1865, and after that the interest becomes widely spread. In its early years, it may fairly be said that much of the editorial work was performed by leisured amateurs rather than by professional scholars?mostly men of social standing with a knowledge of languages, or naval officers. The exception to
Read full abstract
Jun 1, 1965
A J M Sykes 
Open Access