The principal nauigations, voyages, traffiques and discoueries of the English nation : made by sea or ouer-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600. yeres: deuided into three seuerall volumes, according to the positions of the regions, whereunto they were directed .... [Volume 1] . by Richard Hakluyt
This month’s featured text is Richard Hakluyt's seminal work on geography Principal Navigations . Hakluyt was probably born in London around 1552. He was the son of a London merchant also named Richard Hakluyt and attended school at Westminster and later at Christ Church College, Oxford where he received his MA in 1577. Hakluyt was ordained a priest in 1578 and held several church offices in addition to a continuing his studies in geography at Oxford. He had the support and patronage of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (Elizabeth I's principal advisor), Sir Francis Walsingham (Elizabeth I's secretary of State,to whom the first edition of Principal Navigations is dedicated) and later Sir Robert Cecil (William Cecil's son) and served as chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, the ambassador to France from 1583-1588. He was a consultant to the East India Company, became director of the Virginia Company in 1589 and was a charter member of the Northwest Passage Company in 1612. Hakluyt first published a translation of Jacques Cartier's Shorte and Briefe Narration (an account of an expedition to America in the 1530s) in 1580. Hakluyt continued to publish extensively on geographical works including such works as Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent (1582), Discourse Concerning Western Discoveries (1584), Virginia Richly Valued (1609), and his most famous work, The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). He died in London in 1616. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Principal Navigations is a collection of narratives about English voyages, discoveries, and colonial interests abroad. It contains some of the earliest maps known of the New World and some of the most advanced cartographic techniques then available. It is the first volume published in English with so comprehensive an account of foreign voyages and is essential in understanding English perceptions of the world and of the people who inhabited it. Hakluyt's work represents the very beginnings of England's interest in creating an "empire" limited not only to the British Isles but to American, and, eventually to other continents. Principal Navigations reflects the increasing interest of the English government (members of whom funded Hakluyt's research), and demonstrates the importance of European expansionism throughout the early modern period. It is perhaps the most important work in English about geography and cartography and one of the most important chronicles of European exploration. In Hakluyt's own words he "brought to light many rare and worthy monuments which long have lien miserably scattered in mustie corners, and retchlessly hidden in mistie darknesse, and were very like for the greatest part to have been buried in perpetuall oblivion. . ."

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