A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17

Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
1.3M words
Chapters
126

Tags

English Originals World HistoryTravel Human GeographyHistorical ReappraisalPopular ExplanationWorld OrderExotic CultureCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 by Robert KerrAuthor: Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Mar 21, 2005

Editor's review

This is Volume 17 of Robert Kerr's A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, an electronic edition of a public-domain geographical and travel text released by Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in popular narrative but in preserving original or early compiled materials on early modern European maritime exploration and encounters with foreign lands, giving readers direct access to primary-source language and editorial conventions. Reading it conveys the knowledge framework, observational perspective, and expressive habits of 18th- and 19th-century travel writing, making it especially useful for those studying the history of geographical discovery, colonial contact, and travel literature. As a historical compilation, the prose is dense, and place names, personal names, and units of measure often follow old conventions, requiring patience in verification. It is better suited to reference reading in selected passages than to reading straight through. The electronic edition facilitates keyword searches and can be used alongside maps and historical chronologies to better appreciate the text's spatial context.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and prefatory note to understand the regions and themes covered in this volume, then choose chapters of interest for close reading.
  2. Keep a world map and historical chronology at hand to locate routes, place names, and events as you read, reducing difficulty.
  3. Use the book as a reference database, searching keywords for people, places, and products rather than reading sequentially.
  4. Note obsolete units or unfamiliar place names and check them in batches, avoiding frequent interruptions to the reading rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112
  113. 113
  114. 114
  115. 115
  116. 116
  117. 117
  118. 118
  119. 119
  120. 120
  121. 121
  122. 122
  123. 123
  124. 124
  125. 125
  126. 126

FAQ

Is this book a complete general history or a compilation of sources? It is Volume 17 of Kerr's multi-volume compilation of voyages and travels, focused on collecting and arranging maritime and travel records rather than offering a continuous modern general-history narrative. It is better treated as a collection of historical sources and an early editorial project, to be consulted by topic or region.
Can readers without relevant background read this book? Yes, but extra preparation is needed. The text uses archaic English and historical place names and lacks modern annotation. Readers should first grasp the basic outline of the Age of Discovery and use maps, chronologies, and encyclopedic tools for support; otherwise they may get lost in details.
How is the electronic edition best used? The Gutenberg edition is a public-domain electronic text suitable for searching, excerpting, and comparative research. Keywords can locate places, people, and themes, and note-taking software can help organize threads. For deep reading, set small goals by chapter to avoid reading too much at once.
What should readers pay most attention to? Pay attention to the text's historical context and editorial perspective. Early travel compilations often carry period biases and secondhand accounts, and place names and borders differ from today's. Readers should maintain a critical awareness, treat the narrative as historical material rather than objective fact, and consult other sources as needed.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813 Author

Kerr, Robert (1755-1813) is an author included in the Chinese book database, whose biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources; what can be confirmed is that he left seventeen works. The representative works in the database center on the multi-volume series A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, covering several volumes from Volume 01 to Volume 15 and dealing with compilations of voyages, travel, and geographical exploration. Such works typically organize records of long-distance voyages and accounts of foreign lands across the ages, with narration leaning toward the retelling of historical sources and descriptions of journeys, and they bear a strong documentary and compilatory character. In the database's classification, his works fall under inspirational growth, which may relate to a reading orientation toward exploring the unknown and broadening one's horizons. Overall, he appears more a compiler than an original narrator, and his contribution lies in gathering scattered voyage and travel literature into collected volumes, making it easier for readers to understand early world transport and geographical knowledge.