The Gorgon Today

Abstract No One Knows Exactly Who Sir John Mandeville was. He claimed to be an English knight, but that claim is probably as false as everything else about him. In 1372 a certain Jean de Bourgogne of Liege in Belgium claimed on his deathbed to have written the Travel.s, and his tombstone identifies him as the knight, but that assertion has come under suspicion, as well. Whoever he was, his book was wildly popular in its day-one of the first printed bestsellers. More than three hundred copies survive from the beginning of the sixteenth century, translated into every European language. Mandeville’s book was perused by Christopher Columbus before he undertook his historic voyage, by the explorer Frobisher, and by many others. Like a great many bestsellers since, its charms are not due to the veracity of its contents. It is Mandeville we have to thank for the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary and the Vegetable Goose of the West, among other travel legends. We know that he stole large portions of his book from the works of others without attribution (at least twenty such sources have been identified), and that he bumbled a few other sources together and made up much of the rest. He does have a few supporters who claim to have identified original and believable sections amid all this dross.