Richard Hakluyt

Born around 1552 or 1553 and dying on November 23, 1616, Richard Hakluyt was an English writer and priest remembered above all for collecting and promoting accounts of travel and discovery. Rather than being a sea captain himself, he became one of the great organizers of other people's journeys, turning reports, documents, and narratives into books that reached a wide audience.

He is especially associated with Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and the much larger The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Those works gathered material on English seafaring, trade routes, and exploration, and they played an important part in encouraging English interest in North America and overseas expansion.

Hakluyt's writing is still valuable because it preserves a huge range of firsthand and near-contemporary accounts from the Elizabethan age. For modern listeners, he stands at an unusual crossroads: part scholar, part editor, part advocate, and a key guide to the ambitions, curiosity, and contradictions of early English exploration.