SOURCE: An introduction to The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian, edited by Thomas Wright, translated by William Marsden, George Bell & Sons, 1890, pp. ix-xx-viii.

In Wright's 1854 introduction to his revision of William Marsden's translation of The Travels of Marco Polo, Wright offers an overview of Polo's travels and discusses the history of Polo's manuscript.

So much has been written on the subject of the celebrated Venetian traveller of the middle ages, Marco Polo, and the authenticity and credibility of his relation have been so well established, that it is now quite unnecessary to enter into this part of the question; but the reader of the following translation will doubtless be desirous of learning something more about the author than is found in the narration of his adventures. We are informed by the Italian biographers, that the Polos were a patrician family of Venice, but of Dalmatian extraction. Andrea...