Editorial Workshops for Editorial Team of Volumes 1-4 of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations (1598-1600)

This proposal is to facilitate the completion, and submission to Oxford University Press in December 2015, of the first 4 volumes of Richhard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600), through a series of 3 Editorial Workshops to be held over a 24 month period between July 2013 and June 2015 at the University of Southampton. Hakluyt's landmark work, The Principal Navigations, is the single most important collection of English travel ever published. This massive 3-volume folio, comprising approximately 1.75 million words, was instrumental in promoting English expansion through colonial and trade ventures around the globe and in defining an understanding of English identity. Yet, despite its significance, no critical edition of The Principal Navigations (1598-1600) with explanatory annotations has ever been published.

The new edition of Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations will be published in 14 volumes in a rolling programme beginning in 2016, and finishing in 2019. The new edition will satisfy a widely perceived scholarly need and answer a general demand for a quality edition of Hakluyt's text with full editorial apparatus. The edition will be unabridged and presented with minimal modernization. Editorial apparatus will make Hakluyt's text more comprehensible and available, and will create a new generation of readers able to appreciate the scope and depth of this definitive record of early English maritime enterprise and travel.

Hakluyt organised The Principal Navigations by geographical region. For this edition, the text has been divided into 14 regional volumes. It is anticipated that when complete each edited volume will be approximately 200,000-250,000 words. The first folio volume of The Principal Navigations (1598), which covers the north and north-east, has been divided into 4 volumes for this OUP edition. Volume 1, Medieval Voyages, will be edited by Professor Sebastian Sobecki, University of Groningen; Volume 2, Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy will be edited by Dr Angela Byrne, National University of Ireland, Maynooth and Professor Sebastian Sobecki, University of Groningen; Volume 3, Persia and Muscovy Voyages will be edited by Professor Ladan Niayesh, University of Paris VII and Professor Ralph Cleminson, University of Portsmouth; Volume 4, Muscovy, Iceland, Armada, Cadiz will be edited by Professor Anna Agnarsdóttir, University of Iceland, Professor Michael Brennan, University of Leeds, and Dr Felicity Stout, Sheffield University. Byrne and Stout are Early Career Researchers, and though both have been paired with established and experienced academics on their respective volumes, the planned Editorial Workshops will be particularly helpful in supporting their work.

The General Editors, in consultation with the publisher, have appointed an international Editorial Board and Editorial Advisory Board of experts who will provide advice on editorial philosophy, textual scholarship, geographical and historical context; navigational issues; place names; translations, and other key matters. The Editorial Board has been convened to assist the General Editors and to provide oversight for the project, and the Editorial Advisory Board has been established to offer advice on specialist aspects of the text. Key members of the Editorial Board, including the Project's Textual Editor, Anthony Payne, will attend the proposed Workshops. It is intended that developments in editorial policy arising from the 3 Editorial Workshops will be disseminated amongst the volume editors of the remaining 10 volumes in order to encourage best practice in volumes published later in the rolling programme.

The Project to produce an authoritative edition of The Principal Navigations (1598-1600) arises in part from requests and feedback from both within and beyond the academic community. For instance, in 2008 Jowitt and Carey organised an international conference for HEI and non-HEI delegates on 'Richard Hakluyt 1552-1616: life, times, legacy' held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. 120 delegates attended a roundtable session devoted to discussing and debating the requirements of the new edition. The suggestions and ideas received at this session, and the widespread demand for, in particular, a scholarly edition of the expanded 1598-1600 edition of Hakluyt's text, have shaped the development of the Hakluyt Editorial Project. Furthermore the perameters of the edition have been designed in consultation at every stage with the Hakluyt Society, a learned society founded in 1846, and an experienced publishing house of accounts of exploration and travel. In order to benefit from Hakluyt Society expertise and to report on progress on the new edition Carey was elected to serve on the Hakluyt Society Council between 2008-12 and to ensure continuity of communication between the Hakluyt Society and the Project Jowitt was co-opted by Council in 2012.

The Project has already identified and developed a variety of pathways to impact. Jowitt's 2,600 word feature article about Richard Hakluyt, entitled 'The Tudor Guide to Colonising the World', was published in the January 2013 edition of BBC History Magazine. The average circulation figure for this magazine is 80,000. The Editor of BBC History Magazine, Robert Attar, has offered to commission an article about the project to edit The Principal Navigations for inclusion in the Magazine in due course.

The Project has also launched a website describing the project and the edition (see www.hakluyt.org.) and the National Maritime Museum also hosts a page about the new edition (see http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/research-areas-and-projects/richard-hakluyt-conference). This pathway to impact has resulted in a variety of responses from the general public which have been used to inform the development of the project. The project launched a 'Call for Information' aiming to solicit from the general public unpublished information about, for instance, little known named individuals or places in the text, ships, commodities, flora and fauna, or specific sources and analogues for narratives and documents in the collection. Contributors to this 'Call for Information' will be acknowledged and listed in the preface to the edition or in footnotes as appropriate if their information is used.

In addition, Dr Nigel Rigby, Director of Research at the NMM, and member of the Project's Editorial Board, has offered to organise and host an exhibition on The Principal Navigations to coincide with the publication of the first 4 volumes from new edition in 2016, which will create significant possibilities for additional media attention to the Project. Dr Rigby will attend the July 2013 Workshop in order to discuss and plan the exhibition.

In June 2012 Carey delivered the Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture, entitled 'Richard Hakluyt, Editor', describing the new edition and Hakluyt's editorial methods. A printed copy of Carey's lecture will shortly be circulated to all 1500 Hakluyt Society members. The Hakluyt Society website also includes information about the Project (see http://www.hakluyt.com/hak-soc-news.htm).

The Project is mindful to continue to develop pathways to impact, and is alert for opportunities to disseminate research findings at outreach and Life Long Learning events. On 08/12/2012 Jowitt spoke at the University of Southampton's Life-Long Learning Maritime Heritage Study Day, in order to bring the Project to the attention of a new and diverse non-HEI audience. Feedback on the impact of the research on the audience has been recorded.