

A nice copy of the great collection of exploration narratives from antiquity through the up-to-date accounts of John Smith. The work was a continuation of Hakluyt who left a large collection of manuscripts which came into the hands of Samuel Purchas (c. 1577-1626) in about 1620. The work took more than three years to print, and was the largest book published on an English press to that time.
Purchas edited oral accounts and manuscripts, translated texts in classical and foreign languages, and reprinted previously published works. His only original contributions came in the form of various editorials scattered through the volumes on, among other things, Solomon's voyage to Ophir, Pope Alexander's bulls of donation of 1493, the "iniquitie" of papal power, the history of Europe, and "Virginia's Verger," an ideological justification for English settlement in Virginia in the wake of the Powhatan uprising of 1622 ('Pilgrimes,' 4.1809-26). Though his editorial methods are often compared unfavorably with Hakluyt's, his work was probably more influential and more widely read.