Richard Hakluyt

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Volume 7 (1849) is an edition of accounts of exploration in the New World and in the Caribbean islands originally published by Richard Hakluyt in 1582. Hakluyt himself was a priest who acted as chaplain to Sir Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State to Elizabeth I and James I. He was a self-taught geographer and an enthusiastic supporter of colonial ventures in the New World, believing that England should not be left behind France and Spain in the rush to claim new territories.