Select letters of Christopher Columbus : $b With other original documents relating to his four voyages to the New World

Description

"Select letters of Christopher Columbus" by Christopher Columbus is a collection of translated historical letters and related documents written in the late 19th century. The volume gathers Columbus’s own accounts of his four voyages alongside companion firsthand narratives, framed by an extensive editor’s introduction that situates the documents and defends the Hakluyt Society’s scholarship. The opening of the volume presents front matter and a preface in which the editor, R. H. Major, rebuts J. A. Froude’s published criticisms of earlier Hakluyt Society editions, reproducing their exchanged letters to set the record straight. It then launches into a long introduction that surveys claims of pre-Columbian crossings (classical hints, Norse sagas, Chinese, Arab, Welsh, Venetian Zeno narratives, and others), weighing their plausibility while upholding Columbus’s singular achievement and character. The editor outlines the seven documents included (five by Columbus, one by Dr. Chanca on the second voyage, and an extract by Diego Mendez), and sketches Columbus’s early life, studies, influences (Toscanelli, d’Ailly, Roger Bacon, Alfragan), failed bids for Portuguese and then Spanish backing, the La Rábida connection, the Salamanca debates, and the eventual 1492 voyage. It closes this opening segment by noting ongoing debates over the precise landfall in the Bahamas, summarizing competing identifications before the narrative breaks. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• America -- Discovery and exploration -- Spanish -- Early works to 1800
• Columbus, Christopher, 1451-1506 -- Correspondence
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