The Encyclopedia of Exploration

Sydney : Hordern House, 2003 – 2008. Five volumes, quarto, bound in cloth with colour dust jackets (lightly sunned), pp. xv; 1168; xi; 690; x; 724; xii; 1046; prospectus loosely enclosed, a very good set. The definitive reference works. The first four volumes, covering the history of exploration by land and sea from the earliest times up until the year 1940. A fifth volume (not included here), covering Imaginary voyages and invented worlds was published in 2013.

“The vast scope of the Encyclopedia of Exploration makes it a work unlike any other in its combination of historical, biographical and bibliographical data. It includes a catalogue of all known expeditions, voyages and travels from the earliest times to the year 1940, as well as biographical information of the travellers themselves, which places them in their historical context. Over fifteen years in the making, the Encyclopedia of Exploration has been a massive undertaking. The five volumes include over 5100 articles in approximately 4203 pages, some 4 million words. Within the text itself there are many thousands of cross-references between articles, and the work is made even more accessible through extensive bibliographical citations to accompany the articles.” – the publisher

“I can think of no other work of reference, on such a vast scale, compiled so efficiently, and so comprehensively, by a single individual, since Johnson’s Dictionary…” (Felipe Fernández-Armesto in the lead article, Times Literary Supplement,  February 2009).