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Healey, Robin [ed] : Hopeful Travellers: Italian Explorers, Missionaries, Merchants and Adventurers from the Middle Ages to Modern Times, an Exhibition in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, 30 January - 27 April 2007

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto,, Toronto, 2007

ISBN 0772760616

Catalogue of an exhibition of books and maps at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, January 30 to April 27, 2007. This exhibition is about travellers, and the exhibits are for the most part accounts of their travels. There are few restrictions: the journeys will be to anywhere in the world, at any time from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. Some of the books and maps were published as recently as this century, others were first printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The travellers' tales were most often written down by the travellers themselves, or perhaps dictated to amanuenses, soon after their return. Not all are truthful, though most claim to be. One restriction is self-evident: for the journeys to have been recorded at all they must have been at least partly successful. The second restriction is more interesting: each of the explorers and cartographers is Italian, and they are all men - for the cultures of the times, even into the twentieth century, excluded Italian women from such ventures. But these were Italians who, though living at the centre of the Mediterranean region, with opportunities for trade, profit, and God's work close by on every side, chose to cross the deserts, the oceans, and the mountains. Suffice to say that they did, and the world was changed, and they were rewarded. 152p. illustrations include 12 fold-out colour reproductions, bibliography.. Book. Book Condition: Near Fine. Binding: Original Wraps

1st Canadian Edition

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