Hakluyt, Richard (ca. 1552-1616):; Richard Hakluyt was a priest, geographer, editor of geographical and travel literature, sometime adviser to the English East India Company, and promoter of English exploration and ventures overseas in Elizabethan England. Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, he was ordained in 1580, acted as chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador to Paris from 1583 to 1588 (during which time it is speculated that Hakluyt gathered intelligence for Sir Francis Walsingham), and for the latter years of his life was a rector in Suffolk and a prebendary of Westminster Abbey. Fascinated by geography since he was a boy, Hakluyt was involved in the editing, translating, or publication of over twenty-five works of travel literature, including, most notably, The principal navigations, voiages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation, made by sea or over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth. This work, published first in 1589 and then, in an even larger edition, from 1598-1600, was a compilation of documents concerning English travels of discovery from the fourth century right up to those of his contemporaries, such as the voyages of Drake or Raleigh’s expeditions to the New World. Hakluyt was also responsible for securing the services of Theodor de Bry to engrave and publish a widely distributed, ornate, four-language edition of Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, with John White’s illustrations, together recounting the Roanoke Voyages. ;
Works Cited:; Anthony Payne, ‘Hakluyt, Richard (1552?–1616)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11892, accessed22 Sept 2011];