SOURCE: Taylor, E. G. R. “Samuel Purchas: 1612-26.” In Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography, 1583-1650: A Sequel to Tudor Geography, 1485-1583, pp. 53-66. New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1968.

In the following essay, Taylor analyzes the works of Purchas and finds them to be as invaluable to readers of modern times as they were to readers of the past. In addition, he defends Purchas against his detractors.

Among the readers of Drayton's Polyolbion was a man who had pored also over the pages of Hakluyt and Ramusio, who had delighted in the Collections of De Bry and in the Virginian pictures of de Morgues. This man was Samuel Purchas, who, born in 1577, in Thaxted in Essex, and destined never to leave his native land, never even to travel so far as two hundred miles from his birthplace, made up his mind, while still at St. John's College, Cambridge...