A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699

Dampier, William, 1652-1715Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.1
Word count
215K words
Chapters
22

Tags

English Originals World HistoryTravel DiscoveryNature ObservationAdventure JourneyMaritime ExplorationNatural HistoryDocumentary NarrativeExotic CultureSocial ObservationColonial GazeEthnographic Observation

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 Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 by William DampierAuthor: Dampier, William, 1652-1715,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Apr 21, 2005

Editor's review

William Dampier's A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 is a travel document of value both as a nautical record and as geographical observation. Writing in the first person, the author recounts his voyage to New Holland (part of present-day Australia), covering coastlines, flora and fauna, the lives of indigenous peoples, and the various incidents of the journey. As a representative work of late seventeenth-century English voyage writing, the book is plain in language and meticulous in observation; it has value as geographical and anthropological material and also reflects how Europeans of the time understood and misjudged the South Pacific world. The Project Gutenberg edition is easy to search and cite and is suitable for reading as a primary text in maritime history, the history of geographical discovery, and early ethnographic writing. Readers should note its historical limitations and examine its descriptions and judgments with a critical eye.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or preface first to grasp the historical background of the voyage and the author's identity.
  2. Read with a map and a gazetteer at hand to clarify the route and geographical descriptions.
  3. Pay attention to the author's observations of indigenous peoples and take critical notes from a postcolonial perspective.

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

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a genuine voyage record? This is a travel record written by William Dampier based on his actual voyage of 1699; it is a non-fiction ships' log and document of geographical observation. The book contains personal observations, geographical descriptions, and observations of local inhabitants, bearing an evident period perspective and personal judgments; it is not a work of fiction.
Where does "New Holland" refer to in the book? "New Holland" was the old European name, from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, for parts of the Australian continent. Dampier's voyage reached the west coast of Australia, and the book records early European sailors' observations of the region's coasts, products, and inhabitants.
What should modern readers keep in mind when reading this book? Be mindful of the cognitive limitations imposed by the era in which it was written. The book's descriptions of indigenous peoples carry the prejudices and misunderstandings of European sailors of the time, and the geographical and biological records may contain errors. It is advisable to read alongside modern annotations and scholarly literature and to maintain critical thinking.

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

Dampier, William, 1652-1715 Author · British · 1652–1715

William Dampier (1652–1715) was an English navigator and explorer who made several voyages around the world and left detailed nautical journals. His two accounts of the 1699 voyage, A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 and A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699, record the journey's observations, geographical notes, and exotic sights from a first-hand perspective, combining the value of a voyage log with natural-history inquiry. His writing favors factual record and plain language, offering later readers primary material on ocean voyages and southern waters of the time. The library currently holds two of his works; public information on his life is limited, and readers may chiefly come to know his observational and documentary contribution through these voyage accounts.