Böcker av Christopher Columbus

Dramatic, revealing entries -- including Columbus' own words -- document epochal voyage, heavy seas, discouraged crew, first sighting of land, appearance of island natives, more. Translated into English, reset in large type. 44 illustrations, including a number from rare sources. Fascinating historical document. Publisher's note.

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. This volume, first published in 1847 and revised in 1870, contains an edition of the letters of Christopher Columbus and others describing his first four voyages to the New World.

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Volume 86, published in 1893, contains a translation of the journal of Christopher Columbus during his first voyage, together with documents relating to the subsequent voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. Cabot was commissioned by Henry VII to explore in English interests. Less well known to most readers, Corte Real was a Portuguese who was sent by King Manuel I to look for a passage to Asia but seems to have reached only Greenland and north-east Canada before being lost.

No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.