Richard Hakluyt's 12-volume Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, originally published at the end of the sixteenth century, and reissued by the Cambridge Library Collection in the edition of 1903-5, was followed in 1625 by Hakluytus Posthumus or, Purchas his Pilgrimes, now reissued in a 20-volume edition published in 1905-7. When first published in four folio volumes, the work was the largest ever printed in England. An Anglican priest, Samuel Purchas (1577-1626) was a friend of Hakluyt, and based his great work in part on papers not published by Hakluyt before his death. As well as being a wide-ranging survey of world exploration, it is notable as an anti-Catholic polemic, and a justification of British settlement in North America. Volume 13 includes voyages to the north-east and Siberia, the travels of Henry Hudson, a history of Iceland, and a journey to the Crimea.
