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 The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. The first volume issued by the Society was the Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, and this later edition of that work includes additional narratives about other members of the Hawkins family: Richard's grandfather William, his father Sir John and his cousin William. The volume was 'intended to be a monograph of the naval enterprises of the great Elizabethan navigators of the name of Hawkins', from voyages to Brazil in the reign of Henry VIII to the foundation of the East India Company in 1600.
