The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth Century

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Nicolò (c. 1326–1402) and Antonio Zeno (died c. 1403) were navigators from Venice. In 1558 a descendant of Nicolò Zeno published a series of letters between the brothers purporting to show voyages of exploration undertaken in the north Atlantic and North America between 1390 and 1400. These letters are controversial and considered to be forgeries, as contemporary records place Nicolò Zeno in Venice during this period. However R. H. Major provides a sympathetic analysis of this material, demonstrating the ingenuity of this fabricated account.