ABSTRACT
AnM Analecta Medievalia AUMLA Australian University Modern Language Association BL British Library, London BN Bibliothfcque Nationale, Paris ES English Studies MLN Modern Language Notes MLQ Modern Language Quarterly MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen NQ Notes & Queries PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America RES Review of English Studies
The nature of the inquiry When Mandeville's Travels appeared c. 1357 its author claimed to be Sir John Mandeville, an English knight, born and bred in St Albans, who had left England in 1322 and travelled the world for thirty-five years, finally writing his account from memory in his old age. For two hundred years, when copies of the book in manuscripts and early prints circulated throughout Europe, this claim was universally accepted. Even after 1550, when the more fabulous parts of the book began to bring the whole into disrepute in the eyes of some, Sir John Mandeville never lacked sturdy supporters. For example, in the eighteenth century at roughly the same time that an anonymous reader wrote in his copy of an early English edition
No occasion to Travel, to write such stuff. A Fool with a wimsical head furniture may do it at Home,1
Steele wrote in The Taller 22 November 1710 'our renowned Countryman Sir John Mandeville has distinguished himself by the Copiousness of his Invention, and Greatness of his Genius', and was followed by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his Dictionary in 1755 who praised the work for its 'force of thought and beauty of expression'.
