Mandeville

1953 · BOOKS007054 — 2 volumes: lxiii225 pages with frontispiece 2 maps one folding; xii226-554 pages with frontispiece and 2 other illustrations and index. Octavo 9" x 6" bound in original publisher's blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine and gilt pictorial stamped representation of the ship <i>Victoria</i> on the cover and blind stamped ruled edges. Volume one the text of British Library Egerton MS 1982 with an essay on the cosmographical ideas of Mandeville's day by E. G. R. Taylor. The main pagination of this and the following volume is continuous. Volume two The Paris text French with translation by Malcolm Letts the Bodleian text and extracts from other versions. Works issued by the Hakluyt Society Second Series Numbers 101 and 102. First edition<br /><br />Sir John Mandeville flourished 14th century purported author of a collection of travelers' tales from around the world The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville Knight generally known as <i>The Travels of Sir John Mandeville</i>. The tales are selections from the narratives of genuine travelers embellished with Mandeville's additions and described as his own adventures. The actual author of the tales remains as uncertain as the existence of the English knight Sir John Mandeville himself. The book originated in French about 1356–57 and was soon translated into many languages an English version appearing about 1375. The narrator Mandeville identifies himself as a knight of St. Albans. Incapacitated by arthritic gout he has undertaken to stave off boredom by writing of his travels which began on Michaelmas Day September 29 1322 and from which he returned in 1356. The 14th-century chronicler Jean d'Outremeuse of Liège claimed that he knew the book's true author a local physician named Jean de Bourgogne and scholars afterward speculated that d'Outremeuse himself wrote the book. Modern historical research debunked the d'Outremeuse tradition but has yielded few more positive conclusions and the actual author of the <i>Travels</i> remains unknown. It is not certain whether the book's true author ever traveled at all since he selected his materials almost entirely from the encyclopaedias and travel books available to him including those by William of Boldensele and Friar Odoric of Pordenone. The author enriched these itineraries with accounts of the history customs religions and legends of the regions visited culled from his remarkably wide reading transforming and enlivening the originals by his literary skill and genuine creative imagination. The lands that he describes include the realm of Prester John the land of darkness and the abode of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel all legendary. Although in his time "Mandeville" was famous as the greatest traveler of the Middle Ages in the ensuing age of exploration he lost his reputation as a truthful narrator. His book notwithstanding has always been popular and remains extremely readable.<br /><br /><b>Condition:</b><br /><br />Corners bumped previous owner's name to front end paper volume 1 some occasional under lining and notes to front end paper in pencil else a very good set. Hakluyt Society hardcover