PURCHAS, Samuel.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes. Limited edition, one of 1,000 copies, the first reprint since the 1625 edition. The Pilgrimes continues the work of Richard Hakluyt, Purchas's great predecessor in preserving English travel writing, drawing partly on Hakluyt's surviving manuscripts acquired circa 1620 and on nearly 20 years of additional oral and written sources from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.Unlike Hakluyt, who reprinted narratives exactly as they were printed, Purchas frequently put the travellers' accounts into his own words. His work remains an indispensable primary source for geographers, anthropologists, and historians, notably for the early history of Jamestown and for England's claims to North America. It also assembles a wide range of classical, medieval, and early-modern travel narratives relating to the Red Sea and Arabian coasts, preserving key European descriptions of ports such as Aden and Mocha, regional trade in incense and coffee, and second-hand accounts of Mecca and Islamic pilgrimage.According to the editor's preface, the text is an exact reprint of that of 1625 besides adjustments to spelling and punctuation, and the inclusion of a fuller index. This edition earned the publisher wide acclaim for the beauty and format of its books, and was described by the Hakluyt Society as "still the standard reprint of Purchas's most important work" (vol. II, p. 682).

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