PURCHAS, Samuel.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Purchas his Pilgrimes. First edition of Purchas his Pilgrimes, with the preferred, greatly enlarged, fourth edition of the Pilgrimage. Together, this is the desired state of one of the great collections of travel narratives. This handsome complete set was bound by Francis Bedford, considered the leading English bookbinder of his time.Purchas's work covers the period from ancient times up to and including the recent accounts of Virginia by John Smith. The Pilgrimes was conceived as a continuation of the work of Richard Hakluyt - Purchas's "great predecessor in the memorializing of English travel narratives" (ODNB) - based in part on Hakluyt's remaining manuscripts, which Purchas had acquired about 1620, augmented by almost 20 years' collecting oral and written accounts of travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Although, as ODNB notes, "unlike Hakluyt, Purchas attempted to construct an argument upon geographical and historical evidence that was cosmopolitan, pan-European, global, and transhistorical... John Locke even-handedly advised in 1703 that for 'books of travel... the collections made by our countrymen, Hakluyt and Purchas, are very good.'""Today, Pilgrimes remains an indispensable resource for geographers, anthropologists, and historians alike, providing, among other things, prime sources for the early history of the Jamestown colony, and perhaps the best defence ever composed to justify England's claims to North America" (Kelly, p. 985).The four-volume foli

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