The Travels of Marco Polo (15 books)

* The Travels of Marco Polo (15 books)

MARCO POLO (c. 1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO (c. 1300), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies.

Though he was not the first European to reach China, Polo was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. His account provided a clear picture of the East's geography and ethnic customs, and it included the first Western record of porcelain, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and exotic animals. From the beginning, there has been incredulity over Polo's sometimes fabulous stories, as well as a scholarly debate in recent times. Some have questioned whether Marco had actually traveled to China or was just repeating stories that he had heard from other travelers.

THE TRAVELS is divided into four books. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, and the east coast of Africa. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers.

An authoritative version of Polo's book does not and cannot exist due to the hundreds of divergent, often corrupted manuscript variants in existence. The definitive breakthrough in modern English scholarship arrived with the monumental translation by Henry Yule (1871), later revised and expanded by the renowned geographer Henri Cordier in (1903), creating an encyclopedic two-volume edition that combined a faithful literary translation with exhaustive historical, geographical, and linguistic annotations.

The principal and most authoritative modern English translation for contemporary readers is that by Ronald Latham (Penguin, 1958), which synthesized several competing historical manuscripts into a highly readable, fluid English narrative. The translation by Nigel Cliff (Penguin, 2015) integrates decades of fresh geographic and linguistic scholarship, modernizing the narrative while carefully respecting the text's complex textual history. The version by Sharon Kinoshita (Hackett, 2016) invites readers to focus on the text as the product of a larger European (and Eurasian) literary and commercial culture, rather than questions of veracity of the account.


The following books are in ePUB format:

* Customs of the Kingdoms of India [tr. Latham] (Penguin, 2010)
* The Book of Wonder [intro. Masefield] (Parkstone, 2015)
* The Description of the World [tr. Kinoshita] (Hackett, 2016)
* Travels [tr. Cliff] (Penguin, 2016)
* Travels [tr. Latham] (Penguin, 1974)
* Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan [tr. Latham] (Penguin Great Ideas, 2005)
* Travels of Marco Polo [tr. Marsden, ed. Komroff] (Modern Library, 2012)
* Travels of Marco Polo [ed. Rugoff] (Signet, 2004)
* Travels of Marco Polo [tr. Ricci] (Routledge, 2024)
* Travels of Marco Polo [tr. Yule & Cordier] (Open Road, 2020) – 2 vols.

== BIOGRAPHICAL ==

* Marco Polo [Milton Rugoff] (New Word City, 2015)
* Marco Polo and His World [Sharon Kinoshita] (Reaktion, 2024)
* Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu [Laurence Bergreen] (Knopf, 2007)
* Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World [John Man] (Morrow, 2014)


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