Romance, Cosmography and the Trading Companies: Albions England and The Preachers Travels

Abstract

The article examines the circulation of cosmographical knowledge as a result of some of the less prominent, lower-class trading company travellers, often through romance or romance tropes. It focalizes some romance strategies, values and intermediaries – notably Sir John Mandeville, and the figures of the travelling hero – used to convey cosmographical knowledge in narrative form. William Warner’s Albions England (notably the 1596 edition) and John Cartwright’s The Preachers Travels (1611) are the main textual focus, each comprising a different kind of approach to cosmography and travel writing, and each, importantly, boasting a connection – personal or professional – to the trading companies. In the case of Cartwright, the article argues that his is a ‘romancified’ travel text, and the first English first-person account to attend to Shah ‘Abbas’ major building projects at Isfahan’; in the case of Warner, it shows how Mandevillean figures are engaged to support the project of heroizing English trading company travellers and mariners.