The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of The English Nation…

Hakluyt, Richard was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonisation of North America through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principall 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 colonise Virginia, which were granted to the London Company and Plymouth Company (referred to collectively as the Virginia Company) in 1606.

Renaissance diplomat and part-time spy, William Hakluyt was also England's first serious geographer, gathering together a wealth of accounts about the wide-ranging travels and discoveries of the sixteenth-century English. One of the epics of this great period of expansion, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation describes, in the words of the explorers themselves, an astonishing era in which the English grew rapidly aware of the sheer size and strangeness of their world. Mingling accounts of the journeys of renowned adventurers such as Drake and Frobisher with descriptions by other explorers and traders to reveal a nation beginning to dominate the seas, Hakluyt's great work was originally intended principally to assist navigation and trade. It also presents one of the first and greatest modern portraits of the globe.

Notes: Hard. Green cloth. 12 vols. Gilt to cover and spine. Frontispiece clear and bright. Plates present and nice. Pages uncut. Very light foxing throughout. Only 1,000 sets in this publication.