Samuel Purchas


Samuel Purchas was an English Anglican cleric who published several volumes of reports by travellers to foreign countries.

Career

Born in Thaxted, Essex, as the son of a yeoman, Purchas graduated from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1600. In 1604, King James I presented him to the vicarage of St. Laurence and All Saints, in Eastwood, Essex.
Eastwood is two miles from Leigh-on-Sea, at that time a prosperous shipping centre where seafarers congregated. Purchas himself never travelled "200 miles from Thaxted in Essex where I was borne". Instead, he recorded personal narratives shared with him by sailors who returned to England from their voyages. He added these accounts to a vast compilation of unsorted manuscripts that were left to him by Richard Hakluyt, which were later published as Purchas's third – and final – book.
In 1614, Purchas became chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, and rector of St Martin, Ludgate, London. He held a Bachelor of Divinity degree, and with this degree was admitted at Oxford University in 1615.
In 1614, he published Purchas His Pilgrimage: or Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. In this work, intended as an overview of the diversity of God's creation from an Anglican world-view, he presented several abbreviated travel stories that he would later publish in full.
The book achieved immediate popularity and went through four editions between 1613 and 1626, the year of Purchas's death.
His second book, Purchas his Pilgrim or Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man. Relating the Wonders of his Generation, Vanities in his Degeneration, Necessities of his Regenerations, was published in 1619.
In 1625, Purchas published Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, a massive four-volume collection of travel stories that can be seen as a continuation of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations and was partly based on manuscripts left by Hakluyt, who had died in 1616. Although the work is not methodically organized, it may be thematically divided into four volumes:
  • Volume I explores ancient kings, beginning with Solomon, and records stories of circumnavigation around the African coast to the East Indies, China, and Japan.
  • Volume II is dedicated to Africa, Palestine, Persia, and Arabia.
  • Volume III provides history of the North-East and North-West passages and summaries of travels to Tartary, Russia, and China.
  • Volume IV deals with America and the West Indies.
The fourth edition of the Pilgrimage is usually catalogued as the fifth volume of the Pilgrimes, but the two works are essentially distinct. Purchas himself said of the two volumes:
Purchas died in September or October 1626, according to some in a debtors' prison, nearly ruined by the expenses of his encyclopedic labor. Others believe that the patronage of Dr. King, the Bishop of London, which provided him with the Rectory of St Martin, Ludgate, and made him Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, relieved him from his financial troubles. In addition, his move to London allowed Purchas to expand his research. None of his works was reprinted till the Glasgow reissue of the Pilgrimes in 1905–1907.
As an editor and compiler, Purchas was often injudicious, careless and even unfaithful; but his collections contain much of value and are frequently the only sources of information upon important questions affecting the history of exploration.
His editorial decisions as well as the commentary he added can be understood from his basic goal: to edify and educate the reader about the world, foreign culture, and morality. In contrast, Hakluyt aimed to inspire and to interest the nation to pursue exploration.

Inspiration for Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"

Purchas his Pilgrimage became one of the sources of inspiration for the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As Coleridge explains in a note with which he prefaced his poem:
Ernest Hartley Coleridge's edition of the poem compares the following passage from Purchas:
John Livingston Lowes, attempting to trace Coleridge's thinking, also finds an echo of the account of Kubla Khan given in Purchas's Pilgrimes.

Writings

Source:
  • Purchas His Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages Discouered, from the Creation unto This Present.
  • Purchas, his Pilgrim. Microcosmus, or the historie of Man. Relating the wonders of his Generation, vanities in his Degeneration, Necessity of his Regeneration.
  • Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes, contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells, by Englishmen and others. Reprinted in 1905–1907 in 20 volumes.