DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9695#0011
PREFACE.
ETER MUNDY began writing an account
of his many travels in Europe and Asia as
early as 1620, and continued his narrative
at intervals thereafter up to 1667, compiling
a huge MS. volume full of valuable matter
of all sorts, and of exceptional interest to students of
geography and history. It is therefore a matter of con-
siderable surprise that his MS. should have remained
practically buried from that time to this. It was known
to Tonkin, the early 18th century Cornish historian, and
to Thomas Fisher, " Searcher of Records" at the India
Office in the early 19th century, but I have found only
three references to it in works written during the last
sixty-five years. In J. S. Courtney's Guide to Penzance,
1845, there is a short extract from the first Appendix and
a brief notice of the work. In Boase and Courtney's
Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (1874), vol. i. p. 379, there is a para-
graph on Peter Mundy's Travels, and, in W. P. Courtney's
article on Mundy in the Diet, of Nat. Biog. (1894), attention
is drawn to the value of his MS., which is commended
to the notice of the Hakluyt Society.
My own acquaintance with Peter Mundy and his work
is, however, primarily due to Mr William Foster of the
India Office, who inspected the MS. at the Bodleian
Library some five years ago, and furnished me with an
abstract of its contents. Its scope is very wide, as it
ETER MUNDY began writing an account
of his many travels in Europe and Asia as
early as 1620, and continued his narrative
at intervals thereafter up to 1667, compiling
a huge MS. volume full of valuable matter
of all sorts, and of exceptional interest to students of
geography and history. It is therefore a matter of con-
siderable surprise that his MS. should have remained
practically buried from that time to this. It was known
to Tonkin, the early 18th century Cornish historian, and
to Thomas Fisher, " Searcher of Records" at the India
Office in the early 19th century, but I have found only
three references to it in works written during the last
sixty-five years. In J. S. Courtney's Guide to Penzance,
1845, there is a short extract from the first Appendix and
a brief notice of the work. In Boase and Courtney's
Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (1874), vol. i. p. 379, there is a para-
graph on Peter Mundy's Travels, and, in W. P. Courtney's
article on Mundy in the Diet, of Nat. Biog. (1894), attention
is drawn to the value of his MS., which is commended
to the notice of the Hakluyt Society.
My own acquaintance with Peter Mundy and his work
is, however, primarily due to Mr William Foster of the
India Office, who inspected the MS. at the Bodleian
Library some five years ago, and furnished me with an
abstract of its contents. Its scope is very wide, as it