Thomas Coriate traveller for the English wits: greeting from the court of the great Mogul,

In 1612 Coryate set out to India, travelling via Constantinople, Palestine and Mesopotamia and reaching Agra in 1616. His book documents this overland journey and his stay in the court of the Great Mogul in India in a flamboyant style. During the four years he had been in the East, Coryate learned Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani. On one occasion falling in with Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador at the court, he obtained an audience of the mighty potentate, and delivered an oration in Persian. Such anecdotes established his reputation as an eccentric and amusing figure, a judgment reinforced by the book's woodcut of Coryate atop a marvellous elephant. Four of his letters sent from the East are included in the compilation- to Sir Edward Philips, Laurence Whitaker, the High Seneschal and his mother. Coryate died of dysentery only a year after the first publication of this book in 1616, travelling in Surat.