Other editions of book The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian

The following is from the books prologue: Emperors, kings, dukes, marquises, earls, and knights, and all other people desirous of knowing the diversities of the races of mankind, as well as the diversities of kingdoms, provinces, and regions of all parts of the East, read through this book, and ye shall find in it the greatest and most marvelous characteristics of the peoples especially of Armenia, Persia, India, and Tartary, as they are severally related in the present work by Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice distinctly what things he saw and what he heard from others. Wishing in his secret thoughts that the things he had seen and heard should be made public by the present work, for the benefit of those who could not see them with their own eyes, he himself being in the year our Lord 1295 in prison in Genoa, caused the things which are contained in the present work to be written by master Rustigielo, a citizen of Pisa, who was with him in the same prison at Genoa; and he divided it into three parts. Book One of Armenia, Persia, India and Tartary. Book Two of Kublai-Kaan, Cathay, Manji and Thebet. Book Three of Lesser, Middle and Greater India, The Region of Darkness, the Province of Russia and Great Turkey.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kubilai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West, he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. The accounts of his travels provide a fascinating glimpse of the different societies he encountered: their religions, customs, ceremonies and way of life; on the spices and silks of the East; on precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts. He tells the story of the holy shoemaker, the wicked caliph and the three kings, among a great many others, evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy.

First published in 1931. None of the manuscripts which have come down to us represents the original form of Marco Polo's narrative, but it is clear that certain texts are closer to the lost original than others. Entrusted with the task of preparing a new Italian edition of Marco Polo, Benedetto discovered many unknown manuscripts. He carefully edited the most famous of the manuscripts (the Geographic text) and collated it with the other best known ones. * An invaluable index has been added to Aldo Ricci's of Benedetto's text, which includes all the identifications made in the Geographic text and also later editions by Marsden (1818), Pauthier (1865) and Yule (1871). * The difficulty of following Polo on his many journeys has also been simplified by the process of distinguishing between those places on his main route to China and his return journey by sea to Persia and those places which he visited during his stay in China and those he never visited at all.