The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume, first published in 1877, contains four contemporary accounts of the voyages of Sir James Lancaster (c. 1555–1618) between 1591 and 1600 together with the journal of Captain John Knight from his 1606 voyage to discover the 'North-West Passage'. Sir James Lancaster was one of the leading traders and explorers of the Elizabethan era, whose first voyage to India in 1591 was instrumental in establishing the East India Company in 1600.