Richard Hakluyt

Best known for compiling The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Richard Hakluyt was an English priest, geographer, and promoter of overseas exploration. Rather than becoming famous as a traveler himself, he became the editor and organizer of other people’s journeys, preserving reports that might otherwise have been lost.

He studied at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and later served as a clergyman and diplomat. During the late 1500s and early 1600s, he argued strongly for English expansion overseas, supported colonizing projects in North America, and helped give intellectual backing to ventures linked to Virginia.

Hakluyt died in 1616, but his work has had a long afterlife. For readers today, he matters not only as a collector of remarkable stories, but also as a key figure in the history of exploration, empire, and the making of English national identity.