Hakluyt Society recent news and forthcoming events

Hakluyt Society Recent News and Forthcoming Events

Hakluyt Society Studies in the History of Travel

This is a separate series from the main Hakluyt Society volumes and will continue to be published by Routledge despite the main series moving to Boydell and Brewer. Professors Daniel Carey and Joan Pau Rubiés remain as the series editors. The third volume in the series has just been published, The Chronicler of China: Juan González de Mendoza, between Mission, Empire and History (16th-17th centuries) by Diego Sola. This monograph provides an analysis and contextualization of an extraordinarily successful book, the History of the Great Kingdom of China (Rome 1585), by the Spanish Augustinian friar Juan González de Mendoza (1545-1618). These volumes are not part of the subscription entitlement but are available to members from Routledge at a 40% discount, by following the guidance in the members’ section of this website.

Next volume in the Hakluyt Society 3rd Series (No. 42)

This will be Anthony Payne’s Richard Hakluyt: A Bibliography 1580 -1588, a study of the early works of the writer, editor and translator of voyages and travels, Richard Hakluyt (1552 -1616), after whom the Society is named. The book will examine the context and influence of Richard Hakluyt’s work and will revise and expand on the Society’s previous publications about Hakluyt. The introduction includes a summary of the known details of Hakluyt’s life. This volume has just been printed by Society’s new publishers, Boydell and Brewer, so distribution should begin shortly. The administrator is currently updating the distribution list, so you will need to make sure your subscription is up to date in order to receive the book.

The 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Hakluyt Society

The 178th Annual General Meeting of The Hakluyt Society will take place at the Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD (close to Euston Station) and also by remote access to the Society’s Zoom account, at 5.15 pm on Wednesday 12 June 2024. Current members of the Society who wish to join the meeting online are asked to register with the Administrator (office@hakluyt.com) by the end of Wednesday 5 June and they will be sent the Zoom link. Attendees in person are also asked to notify the Administrator so that details can be provided to security to ensure entry at Royal Asiatic Society. Tickets for the reception can be purchased from the Administrator directly (office@haklut.com) for £18. Members are welcome to purchase additional tickets for guests.

2024 Annual lecture

This year’s annual lecture will follow the AGM on 12 June, for both in person and on-line attendance. It will be given by Council members Dr Guido van Meersbergen and Dr Natalya Din-Kariuki of the University of Warwick. The title is “Decolonising Travel Studies: Lessons for the Hakluyt Society” and is a follow-up to the Hakluyt Society Symposium on “Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches”, held to mark the Society’s 175th anniversary in 2021. In this annual lecture, the symposium organisers present the key findings of their project as they pertain to the Hakluyt Society’s field of operations both past and present. It is hoped that this will contribute both to deepening our understanding of the Society and its distinguished history and to inform conversations about the Society’s current and future profile and directions in a changing historical and academic context.

Hakluyt Society Essay Competition 2024

The Hakluyt Society is grateful to all entrants for submitting an essay for consideration in the 2024 Essay Competition and is pleased to announce this year’s results. This year’s winner of the prize of £1200 is Graham Moore, University of Reading, for his essay ‘Mutiny at the Edge of the World: Seafarers. Social Networks, and Shipboard Community during Hudson’s 1610 North West Passage Expedition’. The judges commended it as ‘a model essay that was tightly written and focused revealing exciting research that added new elements to the ill-fated Hudson expedition’.

Due to the exceptional quality of this year’s entries, the judges recommended the award of two Honourable Mentions, to Helen Hawken, Birkbeck, University of London, for ‘White Ladyes of the Pole: Nineteenth-Century British and American Women Travellers in the Arctic’ and to Samuel Cheney, University of Edinburgh, for ‘Exhausting the Ears: Aural Discomfort as Epistemological Disruption in British Travel Writing on China, c. 1860–c. 1911’.

Congratulations to Graham, Helen, and Samuel. Details of how to enter the Hakluyt Society Essay Prize Competition2025 will be announced later in the year.

Latest publication

THIRD SERIES 41: Nigel Statham and Ian C. Campbell, eds.: An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. 2023. 552 pages 27 B/W Illustrations.

Distributed to members starting March 2023.

Latest Videos

The 2023 Annual lecture was held on 21 June 2023. The lecturer was Dr Anthony Payne (Honorary Research Fellow University of East Anglia). The title of his lecture is: ‘What do we know about Richard Hakluyt?’ A video of the lecture can be viewed here.

The 2022 Annual lecture was held on Wednesday, 15 June 2022 at the Royal Asiatic Society. The lecturer was Professor Ladan Niayesh of the Université de Paris, who spoke on ‘Echoing Cities in Muscovy Company Merchants’ Itineraries in Persia and Central Asia (1558–1570s)’. A video of the lecture can be viewed here.

The 2021 Annual Lecture, ‘The Volga: the River as Frontier’, by Professor Janet Hartley, one of the Society’s new series editors, is now available as a video. Watch the video here.

Professor Trevor Levere talks about the experiences of Henry Wemyss Feilden, naturalist in HMS Alert on the British Arctic Expedition, 1875-6, and about his own work of editing Feilden’s journal for the Hakluyt Society. Watch the video here.

Online talk by Michael Brennan

The talk Professor Brennan was planning to give to the editorial workshop scheduled for 20 March is now available on this website by following this link. Professor Brennan’s subject is the Hakluyt Society volume he is editing on English travellers to Venice, 1450-1600. The video is best viewed at ‘full screen’.

Recent publications from the Hakluyt Society

THIRD SERIES 39: Michael Brennan, ed.: English Travellers to Venice, 1450-1600. 2022, pp. xxxiv+433, 16 maps, 27 colour plates, 45 b/w illustrations, 29-page introduction, timeline, appendix, bibliography, index.

Includes 35 separate accounts, drawn from contemporary manuscripts and printed sources, of the experiences of a wide range of English travellers to Venice. The Introduction assesses elements of Anglo-Venetian relationships during the period.

Distributed to members during 2022.

THIRD SERIES 38: Glen F. Dille, ed.: Spanish and Portuguese Conflict in the Spice Islands: the Loaysa Expedition to the Moluccas 1525-1535. From Book XX of The General and Natural History of the Indies by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. 206 pages, 6 maps, 26-page introduction, notes, bibliography.

Distributed to members in May 2021.

THIRD SERIES 37: Derek L. Elliott, ed.: The Voyages and Manifesto of William Fergusson, a Surgeon of the East India Company 1731-1739. 203 pages, 8 maps, 4 colour plates, 9 monochrome illustrations, including a 33-page introduction, bibliography, etc.

Distributed to members in March 2021.

THIRD SERIES 36: Judith E. Bosnak & Frans X. Koot, trans. & eds: The Javanese Travels of Purwalelana / A Nobleman’s Account of his Journeys across the Island of Java 1860-1875. 294 pages, 4 maps, 24 colour plates, 49 photographs, introduction, appendixes, bibliography.

Distributed to members in November 2020.

THIRD SERIES 35: Editor Trevor H. Levere The Arctic Journal of Captain Henry Wemyss Feilden, R.A., the Naturalist in H.M.S. Alert, 1875-1876. xxxi + 400 pages, 10 maps, 17 colour plates, 68 figures. Includes a 34-page Introduction, appendices, bibliography, indexes.

The first publication of the daily diary of Feilden, one of the two full-time naturalists on what was the first major British naval expedition to the high Arctic.

Distributed to members in 2019.

Festschrift volume in honour of Vice-President Will Ryan

A volume has been published to celebrate our former president, Professor Will Ryan FBA: Magic, Travels and Texts: Homage to a Scholar, Will Ryan, ed. Janet Hartley and Denis J. B. Shaw. Among 21 chapters, a section on ‘Travel, Technology and Exploration’ includes three papers by volume editors of the Hakluyt Society and one by an international representative. For details of content and how to purchase, please follow this link.

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Anthony Payne, ed., Hakluyt & Oxford: Essays and Exhibitions Marking the Quatercentenary of the Death of Richard Hakluyt in 1616

The contents include catalogues by Anthony Payne of the two Oxford exhibitions, at Christ Church and at the Bodleian Library, together with essays by Jim Bennett, Anthony Payne and William Poole. A5 format, viii + 104 pp., 8 colour plates.

Price £5; including postage to UK: £6.80; to other European countries: £10.35; to the rest of the world: £12.65.

The book may be ordered through Paypal, with or without a Paypal account, by clicking the ‘Add to Cart’ button below. Please make your selection for postage, then click or tap the ‘Add to Cart’ button. This will take you to the Paypal website where you may pay either as an existing Paypal account holder, or as a guest for a one-off purchase.