Walter Raleigh

Book digitized by Google from the library of the New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

"Sir Walter Ralegh's narrative of his expedition to South America is a fundamental source for the historical anthropology of the Americas. Yet readers must question how Ralegh, the quintessential Elizabethan, garnered his information, and how we should interpret it. In this new edition based on the first printing of the Discoverie in 1596, anthropologist Neil L. Whitehead addresses problems at the heart of current anthropological and literary criticism, and he challenges existing evaluations both of Ralegh and of early travel accounts generally."--BOOK JACKET. "Whitehead has travelled where Ralegh led his expedition along the Orinoco in quest of an indigenous 'empire' in the highlands of Guiana. He draws on his own observations of the region as well as the available sources, including valuable Spanish and Venezuelan texts, to illuminate Ralegh's military engagements with the Spaniards, diplomacy with native 'kings', enigmatic encounters with monsters, and the search for gold (which continues today)."--BOOK JACKET.

At the turn of the 17th century, English writer and explorer Sir Walter Scott read an account of a great golden city in South America. He set out to explore the area, now Venezuela, and on his return he published The Discovery of Guiana. He is considered to have greatly exaggerated his findings, and his work contributed to the El Dorado legend.

"This edition of the letters of Sir Walter Ralegh contains the full text, in the original spelling, with modern punctuation, of all Ralegh's known surviving letters - 230 in all - each one a gem of English prose." "For the first time all the letters have been extensively annotated. The Introduction by Joyce Youings covers the early transcription and printing of the letters, their main content and the handwriting of Ralegh and his clerks." "Ralegh's letters help to reconcile the family man at home on his estate in the West Country with one who is revered, especially in North America, as the founder and inspirer of English overseas settlement. They show him drawn both towards his native West Country, where he was not universally admired, and towards the Court of Westminster where lay the determination of the success or failure of his enterprises."--BOOK JACKET.