William Dampier, the ‘devil’s mariner’ as he has been called, a far voyager and traveller extraordinaire, lived in an era when, more truly than in other periods of history, the past was being put behind the present, and everything was new - a new world discovered by the first stirrings of the new science, under a new political and economic formation.

Dampier’s Monkey examines the late-17th century ways of comprehending an expanding world by re-evaluating the travel narratives of the buccaneer William Dampier. Included in this book is Dampier’s journal of his voyage in the South Seas from 1681 to 1691, complete with his annotations and illustrations, published here for the first time.