"The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation is Richard Hakluyt's monumental collection of English voyages and exploration, bringing together first-hand narratives and documentary accounts of journeys undertaken by sea and overland to the farthest reaches of the known world. Originally compiled and published in greatly expanded form between 1598 and 1600, Hakluyt's work preserves an extraordinary record of Elizabethan maritime enterprise, encompassing voyages to the Americas, Africa, Asia, Russia and the Arctic, and remains one of the foundational works in the history of English exploration and colonial expansion.
Hakluyt drew upon the testimony of navigators, merchants, adventurers and diplomats, together with letters, journals and official documents, recording the exploits of such celebrated figures as Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher and many others. Far more than a collection of adventure narratives, the work documents the growth of English navigation, trade and geographical knowledge at the moment England was emerging as a major maritime power. This Everyman's Library edition includes an introduction by poet and writer John Masefield and presents Hakluyt's vast compilation across a substantial eight-volume set.
Published in London by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd in 1910, this is the Second Edition and complete Everyman's Library eight-volume set, attractively presented in the publisher's original green cloth bindings with extensive decorative gilt designs and lettering to the spines. The volumes retain the particularly handsome illustrated title-page design associated with the early Everyman's Library, and together form an impressive shelf set of one of the great classics of travel and exploration literature. The bindings show the expected age and handling wear, including rubbing and some fraying, with Volume IV showing notably heavier wear to the spine, but the survival of the complete eight-volume set is particularly pleasing.
Adding considerably to the interest of this particular set is its distinguished Australian provenance. Two volumes contain the pictorial bookplate of
Lady Janet Clunies Ross
(1904-1986), wife of eminent Australian scientist and first CSIRO chairman Sir Ian Clunies Ross, together with a handwritten note identifying the books as a "gift of Lady Clunies Ross." Janet Clunies Ross was herself a notable scholar and public figure: a University of Sydney First Class Honours graduate who later studied and taught criminology at the University of Melbourne and was active in Australian social and international affairs. The volumes also bear stamps of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Victorian Branch, providing a further tangible association with the set's Australian institutional history. This combination of a complete early Everyman's Library Hakluyt and identifiable Clunies Ross provenance gives the set an appealing significance beyond that of an ordinary reading copy."
General wear and fading to covers and spines as shown. Pages are clean and well presented. 2 volumes carry the Lady Clunies Ross Bookplate. Some stamps present as shown. No loose pages. No loose covers. A complete 8 volume set in good condition overall. Please study photos to further understand condition.
