Howgego, Raymond John
Entry updated 29 October 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1946- ) UK traveller and author whose studies of explorations and excursions have culminated in the Encyclopedia of Exploration sequence beginning with Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800 (2003), with 5,000+ entries in 4,000,000 words. The scope of the final volume of the series is revealed in its full title, Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel: A Comprehensive Guide to Invented, Imaginary, Apocryphal and Plagiarized Narratives of Travel by Land, Sea and Air, from the Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century (2013). An annotated Bibliography whose remit is extraordinarily thorough (see Dystopia; Fantastic Voyages; Proto SF; Utopia), it provides detailed synopses as well as an accurate bibliographical accounting of over 600 relevant texts.
Howgego has understandably excluded most Lost World narratives and tales involving travel into the Hollow Earth, perhaps assuming (with justice) that the focus of such stories is on the territory reached, with relatively little attention paid to the journey. He also gives Jules Verne minimal coverage, perhaps assuming that extended presentation of the more than fifty novels of the Voyages Extraordinaires, already very well-known and extensively researched, might overbalance his enterprise. In the event, the very high proportion of otherwise under-reported texts here analyzed, some indeed for the first time, seems entirely to justify Howgego's selection process.
The earlier Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (2010 chap) is an overview lecture. [JC]
Raymond John Howgego
born London: 1946
works
series
Encyclopedia of Exploration (selected)
- Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel: A Comprehensive Guide to Invented, Imaginary, Apocryphal and Plagiarized Narratives of Travel by Land, Sea and Air, from the Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century (Potts, Point, New South Wales: Hordern House Rare Books, 2013) [nonfiction: bibliography: encyclopedia: hb/from J M W Turner]
individual titles (selected)
- Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (London: Hakluyt Society, 2010) [nonfiction: chap: in the publisher's Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture series: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry