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 The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Amerigo Vespucci (1454 1512) was an Italian explorer who became a controversial figure. He made several voyages to South America between 1499 and 1502, and wrote accounts of these...

Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to Afro-Eurasians. Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be termed "America," probably taking its name from the feminized Latin version of Vespucci's first name. In his letters are an account of the four voyages to the...