Cook and His Contemporaries 1

While colonial or economic interests continued to inform exploration, many 18th-century expeditions, such as those of La Pérouse and Captain James Cook, were primarily undertaken for scientific endeavour. These voyages had elements of adventure and danger, as all journeys do, but the overarching inspirational elements for writers of fiction during this period were the descriptions of people encountered and places visited. These journeys, and their resulting publications, paid close attention to the charting of land masses, the documentation of flora and fauna, and descriptions of local cultures. Even in this new age, not all the world had been charted and writers could still locate fantastical civilisations in places such as the Great South Land.