A Sea of Books

A Sea of Books. RUTTER Virtual Library (https://www.aseaofbooks.org/) is a site dedicated to the sheer variety of literary genres produced from the Early Modern experience of voyaging in open sea, considering especially, but not only, technical books like sailing directions.
See the video presented at the European Researchers’ night 2020.

Created by Luana Giurgevich.

The virtual collection A Sea of Books was born —almost by chance— as a bibliographical resource of the RUTTER Project. It is a useful tool to begin a reflection on a sheer variety of literary genres produced from the Early Modern experience of voyaging in open sea.

The deep affinity shared between traveling long distances and writing kickstarted a colossal printing industry from the very beginning of the 16th century. The open sea influenced the imagination of generations of travelers, explorers, cosmographers, men of letters and common people in vastly different ways, engaging with concepts from marine ecology, science, oceanography, marine policy and environmental history.

In this website you will find a constellation of specialized virtual libraries on maritime literature, organized in various sections. Every section is continuously updated.
All the sources are open–access.

To contribute, please contact Luana Giurgevich (luana.giurgevich@gmail.com).