SOURCE: "Hakluyt's Emporium," in The Times Educational Supplement, No. 3404, September 25, 1981, p. 25.

In the following review essay, Vansittart provides a vivid sampling of Hakluyt's narratives of discovery, and considers their place in the English literary tradition.

Geographer, linguist, historian, Richard Hakluyt was also Archdeacon of Westminster, diplomat, and busy advocate of Elizabethan sea-power, overseas trade, colonial enterprise. Often considered chiefly as a maritime narrative … [Hakluyt's Voyages] is an anthology of both land and sea travels, from eye-witnesses of most varied classes, ranks, occupations, involving Raleigh (as author), Humphrey Gilbert, Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, and other names lesser but scarcely ignoble. Heroes, rakes, profiteers, zealots, desperadoes, all were space-invaders and, encountering so many strange peoples in different cultural stratas, they were also time-travellers. Their assignments ring like antique gongs: Muscovy, Cathay, Bohara, Ormuz, Kazan, Astrakhan, Alexandria. They describe Persia, Goa, Venice, Jerusalem, India, penetrate Newfoundland, venture the Straits of Magellan and...