Columbus on Himself

The historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto presents Christopher Columbus largely through Columbus's own letters, journals, and reports, arranged in chronological order and linked by brief commentary. The documents cover the planning of the first Atlantic crossing, the landfalls in the Caribbean, later voyages, disputes with the Spanish crown, and Columbus's claim that he was an instrument of Providence. Editorial notes identify what Columbus asserted, what he omitted, and where later copyists intervened. The book is a documentary self-portrait: a navigator's account of discovery, gold, conversion, and grievance, framed so that the reader hears Columbus before hearing the biographer.

Bound in white cloth with a contemporary map in colour on cover. Dark green endleaves. Pale yellow slipcase.