EDITOR'S PREFACE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
Summary
IN several previous volumes, the Hakluyt Society has published new editions of the original accounts of all the English voyages in search of a North-West Passage to India which were undertaken between 1576 and 1632, when, after the return of Foxe and James, the search was discontinued for a considerable period. These voyages form a distinct and connected series. Between the years indicated, only one expedition was sent out with the same object from any other country than England, viz., the Danish Expedition to Hudson's Bay under Jens Munk in 1619-1620; and inasmuch as that expedition was piloted by Englishmen and was intended to follow up the results obtained upon some of the English voyages, it may fairly be looked upon as closely connected with the latter. It seemed desirable, therefore, to complete the Society's series of works relating to the expeditions in question by adding an English version of Munk's narrative of his voyage. There appeared so much the more occasion for doing so, as Munk's book, which was published in Danish in 1624, had never been translated into any other language, and its contents, which are interesting in many respects, were known to the world at large only through incomplete and unreliable abstracts. On the initiative of Mr. Miller Christy, the editor of the last English voyages, viz., those of Foxe and James, it was accordingly arranged that an English version of Munk's Navigatio Septentrionalis should be issued by the Society under the joint editorship of Mr. Christy and Mr. E. Delmar Morgan, as was announced at the time.
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- Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620In Two Books, pp. vii - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1897