Notes Upon Russia

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This two-volume set is a translation, first published in 1851 2, of the account by Sigismund von Herberstein (1486 1566) of his visits to Russia in 1517 and 1526 as Ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor. He published his Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, the earliest detailed Western description of the land and people of Russia, in Latin in 1549. This edition also includes letter-poems by George Turberville, who visited Russia in 1568, and Volume 2 contains an index to both volumes."