Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries

A fine set of the famous Maclehose edition of Hakluyt, 'the first lecturer on modern geography and one of the leading spirits of Elizabethan maritime expansion' (PMM). This handsome production reprints the second and best edition of Hakluyt's magnum opus, the classic of travel literature. The first English collection of voyages, the work has always been recognised as one of the gems of Elizabethan letters. Although intended to be devoted to American discoveries and the British colonisation of America, and published a few years before the Dutch voyage of the Duyfken to the west coast of Cape York in 1605, it is significant that by the time of the revised second edition, Hakluyt was able to include the first tentative forays of the English into the South Seas, whether round Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. As a result, Hakluyt's book represents the pinnacle of Elizabethan geography, but is also among the earliest published works on British expansion into the Pacific.

The Maclehose edition is considered the finest modern edition of Hakluyt. It was published as the first twelve numbers of the "Extra Series" of the Hakluyt Society. This is the deluxe issue, from an edition of 100 copies, without the limitation leaf (apparently so issued).

The final part, originally published in 1600, includes most of the New World material, not only cataloguing many of the early American discoveries, but also representing the cusp of early voyages into the Pacific, notably in the section entitled "A Catalogue of divers English voyages, some intended and some performed to the Streights of Magellan, the South Sea... to the headland of California, and to the Northwest...". Printed here are not only reports of the voyages of Drake and several of his compatriots, there is an early account of the important 1586 voyage of Thomas Cavendish, and discussions of major voyages which were destined for the South Seas but failed to round Cape Horn, including those of Edward Fenton (intended for China), Robert Withrington, and the failed 1591 second voyage of Cavendish.