Annual Letter to the American Friends of the Hakluyt Society

As president of the American Friends of the Hakluyt Society (AFHS), I am taking this opportunity to update you on our activities as well as those of our parent organization. For more than 160 years, the Hakluyt Society has made the original works of great explorers, geographers, and travelers available to scholars, students, and the interested public in the form of critical editions of high quality. The AFHS, a 501(3)(c) charitable foundation registered in Rhode Island, has only one function, which is to help insure the future of the Hakluyt Society and its widely praised publishing program (full details at www.hakluyt.com).

This year, the AFHS presented two programs to increase awareness of the Hakluyt Society and its mission. On November 6, Professor Sarah Tyacke CB presented “Cathay and the Way Thither: Mapping the Northern Passages, 1550-1700” at the Explorers Club in New York City, as the Club’s Thorasen Lecturer. Turnout and interest were both excellent! On November 11, AFHS Secretary-Treasurer Clare Flemming hosted an AFHS-sponsored reception at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries in Chicago. Ms. Flemming and Professor Tyacke, who attended the reception as AFHS Guest of Honor, emphasized the unique importance of the Society to scholarly study of exploration. We hope to be able to present similar awareness-raising activities at other venues in the US in coming years.

As always, the Society’s list of upcoming publications reflects its worldwide scope. The final volume for 2006 is Four Travel Journals: America, Antarctica and Africa, 1775-1874, under the combined editorship of Herbert Beals, Richard Campbell, Anita McConnell, Ann Savours, and Roy Bridges. These will be followed next year by Ibn al-mujawir's Guide to Thirteenth-Century Arabia, edited by G. Rex Smith, and the second volume of The Journals of William Scoresby the Younger, 1789-1857, edited by Ian Jackson. For the future, a high note for the American audience will be the appearance of Russian California in 2 volumes, edited by James Gibson.

Publication costs continue to rise unabated, but the Society is meeting the challenge. With AFHS assistance, Hakluyt Society President Professor Bridges recently received funding from the Delmas Foundation, an American charitable foundation, to support the printing of volume 2 of Dr. Jackson’s Scoresby the Younger.

Other initiatives are in the works, and will doubtless help, but I’d like to call on you as well. Any donation will be tax-free under US tax law, and the money will go to support the Society’s publishing program and associated expenses. Any amount that you are able to contribute will make a difference. Our categories are: Contributing Member, $1-$99; Sustaining Member, $100-$499; Patron, $500 and above. Please send your check (in US dollars) to: AFHS, c/o John Carter Brown Library, Box 1894, Providence RI 02912

Coming to New York in May of 2008 or thereafter? If you can provide a donation at the Sustaining Member or Patron level, I would be delighted to give you and your family a private tour of the American Museum of Natural History’s forthcoming exhibition The Horse, which I am curating. Opening in May, 2008, it will cover 20,000 years of human-equine interaction, from the Paleolithic to the Triple Crown, illustrated by hundreds of objects from all parts of the world. To arrange an appointment, write to or call 212-769-5480.