Abstract
The Elizabethan explorer Anthony Jenkinson was a legend in his own day, and his extensive travels were celebrated by his contemporaries in both prose and poetry. Jenkinson's travels took him through much of Europe, the Near East and North Africa, but it was arguably his journey to Persia that captured the Elizabethan imagination. He composed the earliest extant English narrative about Persia, and was known as the Great Traveller before he was superseded by the swashbuckling Sherley brothers a few decades later. Jenkinson was universally admired for travelling as far as Persia, and was credited with laying the foundations for the first Anglo-Persian contacts in the early modern period.
Jenkinson's journey to Persia, though celebrated in his own day, has been regarded for the past century as an awkward, if not embarrassing episode in the history of Anglo-Persian relations. The contrast between the sixteenth and nineteenth century readings are especially striking since they are based on the same sources. This thesis attempts a critical reading of the narrative, and tries to ascertain how and why the two readings differ so widely from one another.