Renaissance mad voyages: experiments in early modern English travel

A vogue for travel 'stunts' flourished in England between 1590 and the 1620s: playful imitations or burlesques of maritime enterprise and overland travel that collectively appear to be a response to particular innovations and developments in English culture.

This study is the first full length scholarly work to focus on the curious phenomenon of a 'madde voiages', as the writer William Rowley called them.

Anthony Parr shows that the mad voyage (as Rowley and others conceived it) had surprisingly deep and diverse roots in traditional travel practices, in courtly play and mercantile custom, and in literary culture.