SOURCE: Barker, Russell H. “George Sandys' Relation.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Art and Letters XXX (1937): 253-73.

In the following essay, Barker discusses Relation as a work written by Sandys for the purpose of educating his readers.

Evidence is not hard to find for the popularity soon achieved by George Sandys' Relation, his account of a journey to Turkey, Egypt, the Holy Land, and the “Remote parts of Italy, and Ilands adjoining,” published in 1615. By 1670 the book had gone through seven editions, and parts of it had been included by Samuel Purchas among His Pilgrimes. During the seventeenth century the book was held in particular esteem for the account it gave of the East and for its picture of Jerusalem. It was this that Fuller most emphasized in his sketch of Sandys in the Worthies:¹

He proved a most accomplished gentleman, and an observant traveller, who...