Cosmographie

Peter Heylyn's "Cosmographie" is the most comprehensive description of the known world written in 17th-century England.

Produced in the turmoil of the English Civil War, "Cosmographie's" significance in English intellectual life far outlasts its origins.

Composed by combing relevant texts for information the work is ordered according to a spatial framework of continents and nations.

With its seductive prose style and enlivened subject matter, generations of scholars have found in this work an incomparable source of information.

A high proportion of scholars and gentlemen in the late 17th and early 18th centuries perused "Cosmographie".

This popularity continued throughout the 20th century and as an acknowledged classic of geographical writing "Cosmographie" is an text for modern scholars across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, who seek to understand Stuart England and more generally the intellectual culture of the late Renaissance.