Select Letters of Christopher Columbus

1847

Special Collections E115.2 E5 1847

London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society

The second Hakluyt Society publication was edited and translated by Richard Henry Major (1818–1891), honorary secretary of the Society in its first years. This work contains various documents on the ‘discovery’ of America, including five letters by Columbus describing his four voyages. Major was Keeper of Maps at the British Museum and secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. He had a strong bibliographical interest in Columbus’s earliest printed letters, and was keen to identify (in modern terms) the first landfall. The vignette on the cover of the Hakluyt Columbus volume depicts Magellan’s ship ‘Victoria’, chosen by William Desborough Cooley, founder of the Society, because it was ‘a monument to the most remarkable voyage ever performed’ – the first circumnavigation of the world. Adopted by the Society, this logo is still used.