Justin Croft Antiquarian Books - Rare and Antiquarian Books and Manuscripts

First edition of the first English guide to foreign travel. Palmer’s intention was to explore the motivation for travel and explain the ways in which travel could be beneficial to the individual and to his country. Following the example of Zwinger’s Methodus Apodemica (1577) Palmer’s work contains four large and elaborate tables showing the diversity of types of foreign travellers (from tourists, to spies and exiles) and the priorities they should adopt while abroad. Palmer was not himself a seasoned traveller and the book is not a practical guide, but is culturally important as a complete exposition of an English Renaissance theory of travel. ‘Sir Thomas Palmer (1540–1626), “the Travailer,” born in 1540, was the third son of Sir Henry Palmer of Wingham, Kent... He was high sheriff of Kent in 1595, and in the following year went on the expedition to Cadiz, when he was knighted. In 1606 he published ‘An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes into forraine Countries the more profitable and honourable,’ London, 4to. Here Palmer discussed the advantages of foreign travel, and some of the political and commercial principles which the traveller should understand. The book is dated from Wingham, where the author is said to have kept, with great hospitality, sixty Christmases without intermission. The book is dedicated to the young Henry, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the throne, who would then have been 12 years old’ (DNB).