Editorial Matters

This essay examines some of the major challenges facing editors of early-modern travel texts. They may be drawn into four broad categories: genre, authorship, textual history and readership. How these various elements are interpreted and drawn together often defines how a modern edition, with its introduction, annotations and other scholarly apparatus, is presented to its diverse readership. Two specific examples – Richard Hakluyt’s accounts of the Spanish Armada (1588) and the Cadiz voyage (1596) in his Principal Navigations (1598–1600) – are analysed in detail to explore how issues of textual ownership, censorship, translation, adaptation and early-modern editorial practices may impinge upon the modern editor’s decisions.