Samuel Purchas

Samuel Purchas , 1577?-1626, English clergyman and compiler of travel literature, b. Essex. Chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, he later was rector of St. Martin's Church, London. His first book, Purchas His Pilgrimage (1613), was designed as a survey of peoples and religions of the world. Its success led to his most famous compilation of travel literature, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrims (4 vol., 1625) for which he used the papers of Richard Hakluyt, East India Company records, and many manuscripts he had collected, which have since been lost.

Bibliography: See selections by H. G. Rawlinson (1931) and C. Wild (1939).

Purchas, Samuel (1577–1626), published in 1613 Purchas His Pilgrimage, Or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages; in 1619 Purchas His Pilgrim; and in 1625 Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travell by Englishmen and Others, which is in part based on manuscripts left by Hakluyt. It contains accounts of voyages to India, China, Japan, Africa, and the Mediterranean and attempts to discover the North-West Passage, the Muscovy expeditions, and the explorations of the West Indies and Florida. Coleridge was reading about Kubla Khan in Purchas when he fell into the trance that produced his own poem on the subject, and J. L. Lowes in The Road to Xanadu (1927) further traces his debt. (See also Romanticism.)

Purchas, Samuel (1575?–1626), English clergyman, whose best‐known religious writing is Purchas his Pilgrim. Microcosmus, or the histories of Man (1619). He is famous for carrying on the work of Hakluyt, although his editions of contemporary travel narratives are considered inferior in style and scholarship to those of his predecessor. In 1613 he published his first collection, Purchas his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. The final revision of this work (1626) constitutes a supplemen‐tary volume to his comprehensive extension of Hakluyt's collection, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells, by Englishmen and others (4 vols., 1625). The first half of this enthusiastic work is devoted to travels in the Old World and the Far East, while the second half contains narratives of voyages to America.