The Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes of Master Anthony Knivet
An English Pirate in Sixteenth-Century Brazil
New Approaches to the Americas Series

This is the first critical edition of the original 1625 travel account by Anthony Knivet, an Englishman who spent nine years in Brazil in the last decade of the sixteenth century. His is the oldest extensive account of Brazil written by an Englishman, but despite its historical, geographical, and ethnographic relevance it has never merited an annotated (or even a separate) edition in English. This edition, which includes a detailed introduction and extensive notes, allows the English-speaking public to follow Knivet's compelling tale. The account describes Knivet's incredible adventures, experienced roughly between 1592 and 1601, which include working as a drudge for the governor of Rio de Janeiro, escaping into the hinterland to live with native tribes and joining in expeditions of conquest and gold-seeking. The story provides a unique insight into early colonial Brazil and the myriad of people occupying its territory: Portuguese settlers, mixed-race servants, Indians, slaves, and European travellers.

Introduction; The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his second voyage to the South Sea, 1591; Appendixes; Selected bibliography; Note on the text.

Vivien Lessa de Sá is Teaching Associate in Portuguese Studies at the University of Cambridge and Lecturer in English for the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Her Portuguese translation of Anthony Knivet's adventures was published in Brazil in 2007.