The early seventeenth-century traveler Thomas Coryate’s five-month tour of Western Europe culminated in Coryats Crudities, one of the strangest travelogues published in early modern England. This edition abridges the Crudities’ more than 900 pages to a manageable size, focusing on episodes most likely to be of interest to students—such as Coryate’s descriptions of Venetian mountebanks, courtesans, and Jews; his crossing of the Alps; and his attendance at a Corpus Christi celebration in Paris.

The selection of contextual materials includes illustrations from the first edition, along with a sampling from another eccentric feature of the Crudities: a collection of mock commendatory poems making fun of Coryate and his journey.

Thomas Coryate's profile page

Philip S. Palmer's profile page

Joseph L. Black is professor and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Joseph Black's profile page

Leonard Conolly's profile page

Kate Flint's profile page

Isobel Grundy's profile page

Don LePan, founder and CEO of academic publishing house Broadview Press, is the author of several non-fiction books and of two other works of fiction; his novel Animals (2010) has been described by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee as “a powerful piece of writing and a disturbing call to conscience.”

 

Don LePan's profile page

Roy Liuzza's profile page

Jerome J. McGann's profile page

Anne Lake Prescott's profile page

Barry V. Qualls' profile page

Claire Waters' profile page

“Philip S. Palmer’s judicious selection captures the full flavor and range of Coryate’s idiosyncratic and outlandish adventure. For the first time, this landmark text in the history of travel writing is made available in accessible format, allowing new generations of readers to appreciate its wit, energy, and carefully-constructed eccentricity. Coryate’s delight in oddities and in recounting his personal misfortunes is thoughtfully balanced in this edition against his equally important interests in exploring what could be achieved by travel and what it meant to be a tourist.” — Claire Jowitt, University of East Anglia

“From his famous encounter with a Venetian courtesan to his celebration of the Great Tun of Heidelberg; from the Palace of Fontainbleu to the clock towers of Strasbourg; and whether describing great art treasures or the peculiarities of tavern meals, Coryate is invariably entertaining and informative.… We should be grateful to Philip Palmer, whose judicious selection makes Coryate widely available for general readers, and who provides enough explanation for us to comprehend the work while allowing it to speak for itself.” — Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex