on the trials of compiling a bibliography of travel literature including all times and places, written or Englished for the general public

Angela & I are working with another subject specialist and his graduate student on compiling a bibliography of travel literature. Somehow she (the other grad student) is compiling post-1950 travel literature, and I'm compiling all the pre-1950 travel literature. Fair division of work? We're listing any works that were written or translated in to English. There are no geographic or time constraints on what we include, so that means I'm looking for everything from say around 1300 on to 1950 about any geographic place.

Don't get me wrong. It's an interesting project, and the older works are more interesting to go through than the modern works. Today if something was originally written in another language, we'll just say that it was translated. Back in, say, 1568 works were "Englished" or "done into English" rather than translated. Much more creative, don't you think?

Also, the titles of these things are priceless. Take this book written anonymously in 1632: A Short survey of the kingdome of Sweden containing a briefe description of all the provinces of this whole dominion, as also the riches of this kingdome, the antiquitie, nature, and manners of this nation, together with the government of this realme, might and power of this great king as well by sea as by land, his great officers, his customes, and reuenues of the crowne: a catalogue of many of the kings of Sweden, of those especially who have reigned these last five hundreth yeares, with some of their most memorable acts and deeds, with their alliance and issue or off-spring : something also more particularly concerning that illustrious invincible great Gustauus Adolphus the 2. and some of his most memorable acts since his comming to the crowne, as well before as since his entring Germany, untill this present yeare 1632.

Yes, that really is the entire title.

The "creative" spelling also makes searching for these old books interesting. Just look at the spelling in the title (above). This one is fairly readable. Some of the older manuscripts use 'vv' for 'w', 'v' for 'u', and 'I' for 'J'. They throw various consonants and vowels in places we would never even think of putting them today. I've seen 'even' spelled 'iven' and 'far' spelled 'farre'. I love it. If nothing else, all this makes the project more interesting :)