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The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. By Richard Hakluyt. Imprinted at London, 1589. Photo-lithographic Facsimile with an Introduction by David Beers Quinn and Raleigh Ashlin Skelton and with a New Index by Alison Quinn. 2 vols. Hakluyt Society Extra Series XXXIX. Publ. for the Hakluyt Society and the Peabody Museum of Salem by the Cambridge University Press, 1965. $35.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Eleanor Rosenberg*
Affiliation:
Barnard College
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Abstract

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Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1966

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References

1 Both writers stress the provisional nature of their contributions, and the introduction suitably acknowledges the debt of all Haklyut scholars to the relevant works of Taylor, E. G. R. and to Parks, George B., Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages, recently issued in a revised edition (New York, 1961)Google Scholar.

2 English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama(Oxford, 1954), pp.437-438.

3 Page 535 of the 1589 edition, from the account of the 1564-1565 voyage of John Hawkins.

4 Hakluyt's correction of the passage quoted above, for inclusion in the 1600 edition (III, 513), provides an example of his conservative revisions in the interests of clarity. Aside from minor changes in spelling and capitalization, he replaced the comma after 'say’ (3rd line) by a semi-colon, and modified the wording to read ‘but then came thither a Captaine from some of the other townes, with a dozen souldiers upon a time when our Captaine and the treasurer … .’ The syntax has been improved but the style remains uncouth. For Hakluyt's editorial practices in preparing the second edition, see Quinn's introduction, pp. li-lii.

5 Not always, however. By reproducing both Sir Jerome Bowes's own account of his embassy to Russia in 1583-84 and the much less damaging account substituted by Hakluyt during the printing of the 1589 edition (Bowes leaves, first and second states), the facsimile edition allows us to catch Hakluyt in the act of repairing an error. See pp. 491 ff. at the end of Vol. 1.

6 Pp. 677-718 of the 1589 edition.

7 Thanks largely to the publishing activities of the Hakluyt Society, the primary sources for some of the sections have been carefully collected and edited, and much of the historical spadework has also been accomplished. Particular mention should be made of Professor Quinn's contributions in this area, including The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 2vols. (London, 1940), and The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590, 2vols. (London, 1955). The interested reader will already be familiar with the works of George B. Parks and E. G. R. Taylor mentioned in note 1.