Richard Hakluyt the Younger (1552?–1616), cosmographer and clergyman, was famous in his own day, rewarded with significant posts and offices, and recognized for his numerous contributions to geographical learning. While he was still alive, he was called “Industrious Hakluyt” for his main publication, commonly known as The Principal Navigations of the English Nation, “[w]hose reading,” the poet Michael Drayton said in 1606, “shall inflame/Men to seeke fame.”

By the early twentieth century, Hakluyt's name had evolved into the adjective “Hakluytian,” referring to fact-laden forms of writing, especially historical narratives. In 1846, his memory was honored by the formation of The Hakluyt Society, devoted to the publication of primary documents and texts about travel and geographical discoveries. Its activities are meant to follow on from what Hakluyt himself had accomplished in Principal Navigations. Payne's Bibliography is an unusual, and in some respects unique, addition to the Society's lists. Instead of printing carefully edited original sources from the past, it traces, as Payne says, “the composition and material form” of the “ten works written by Hakluyt or produced with his involvement between 1580 and 1588,” plus related materials (xxiv). It is, in its own way, Hakluytian in character. It meets its goal by covering, as Payne says, “Hakluyt's developing interests, his intellectual debts and milieu, the books and other sources available to him, and his patrons and career from his time at Oxford until the imminent publication of the original edition of Principal Navigations in 1589” (xxiv). It is partly a reference bibliography, but in the scope and depth of its analytical and historical account of the ten works studied, it is also an excellent example of book history.

Payne begins his analysis of each of the ten works with a detailed bibliographical description of the original edition or manuscript, listing the locations of the surviving copies. He then offers a deeply researched, contextualized, and informative comment about its authorship and sources. In the case of printed items, he also informs readers about what is known about the printer, the dedicatee, and any additional patronage the work enjoyed. The volume concludes with two appendices, originally published as research articles in the online Journal of the Hakluyt Society, followed by a 208-page-long “Reference and Bibliographical Index” that provides detailed citations for over 3,500 printed primary and secondary works concerning the subjects covered in the volume. Also included is a separate listing of manuscripts and several specialized indexes. The result is a learned guide to Hakluyt's own activities in the decade before the Armada and to their historical importance to the colonizing enterprises and the conflicted international affairs of the era.

Of the ten primary works discussed in detail, only three are by Hakluyt himself: Divers Voyages, published in 1582, and two manuscripts from the same period. Divers Voyages, issued in support of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's second attempted colonizing venture to North America, reproduces texts and documents, plus two maps, focused on previous Atlantic voyages. Dedicated to Philip Sidney, who in 1584 would call Hakluyt a “good trumpet” for a similar colonizing project, it is a precursor to Hakluyt's much more ambitious Principal Navigations. The earlier of the two manuscripts is his synoptic “Analysis” of Aristotle's Politics, produced initially in 1583 when Hakluyt was lecturing on the subject at Christ Church, Oxford. Hakluyt personally presented a copy to Queen Elizabeth I while on a visit to her Court in 1584. In reciprocation, she rewarded him with a prebendal stall in Bristol Cathedral, reinforcing ties he already had with that city's major merchants. The second manuscript, usually entitled the “Discourse of Western Planting,” was also presented to the Queen on the same occasion. It was written in support of Walter Ralegh's about-to-be colonizing effort in what he called Virginia. Payne's exemplary accounts of the genesis of these texts make clear their importance not just to Hakluyt's biography and to the story of England's colonizing and commercial ventures during Elizabeth I's reign, but to the broader dynamics of politics, patronage, and court life in the era.

The rest of the entries in the volume demonstrate that Hakluyt's interests at the time concentrated on the Atlantic world without being limited to it. At their heart are five printed works focused broadly on “New World discovery.” The publication in London in 1580 of John Florio's translation into English of Jacques Cartier's account of his two voyages to New France was promoted and financed by Hakluyt in support of Gilbert's venture. The edition of Laudonnière's history of the ventures of Protestant French in Florida, printed in French in Paris in 1586, was backed by Hakluyt in the interests of Ralegh's Virginia enterprise. Martin Basanier, its editor, dedicated it to Ralegh. Hakluyt himself then translated the work into English and financed its publication in London in 1587, prefacing it with his own dedication to Ralegh in support of his Virginia venture. He played an equally direct and important role in the publication, at his own expense, in Paris in 1587 of all eight parts in Latin of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo, providing in the edition his own effusive dedication to Ralegh and his Virginia project. Also related is the edition of Espejo's report of his expedition to New Mexico in 1582–83 published at Hakluyt's expense in Paris in 1586. Two other works—namely Pigafetta's Intinerario (1585), recounting his travels to Constantinople in 1567–68, and Gonzáles de Mendoza's L'historia del gran reyno della China (1587), The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China (1588)—plus Payne's reprinted essay on “Hakluyt and the East India Company,” reveal that Hakluyt's interests extended broadly beyond the Atlantic world.

Anthony Payne has produced an invaluable resource not just for those studying the life and works of Richard Hakluyt himself, but for all scholars interested in the history of English exploration and colonization and the history of the book in England and Western Europe in the early modern period.