The Macclesfield copy, and a superb example of this revised and augmented edition of the first collected voyages to be published in English, Richard Eden's 'The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India' (1555), including a beautiful woodcut illustration of the stars in the skies of the South Pole.

This new edition incorporates, for the first time in English, Peter Martyr's fourth 'Decade', which gives account of the voyages of Hernandez de Cordoba, Grijalva, and Cortes; Maffei's account of Japan; and the first account in English of Pereira's description of China. All in addition to the translations of Martyr's 'De orbe novo' and Oviedo's 'History of the West Indies', Lodovico di Varthema's travels in 1503 to Arabia, including Mecca, and Medina, Egypt, Persia, Syria, Ethiopia and East India, which had appeared in the earlier edition of 1555.

Richard Willes (c1546–1579) was educated at New College, Oxford, before becoming a Jesuit in 1565 at Mainz. From there he went to Rome, then Perugia, before returning to England, and the Anglican Church, in 1572, to write poetry and study geography. He found patronage with the firmly protestant family of Francis Russell, earl of Bedford, and published this 'History of Travayle...' dedicated to Bridget, countess of Bedford; "it included a treatise on Frobisher and the north-west passage, addressed by Willes to the earl's daughter, Anne, countess of Warwick, an investor in Frobisher's ventures. A major revision of Richard Eden's 'Decades of the Newe Worlde' (1555), the 'History...' added substantial new material on Asia, nearly all derived from continental sources and including accounts of China and Japan translated by Willes and never before printed in English (he refers to G. P. Maffei, the Jesuit historian of the Indies, as his "olde acquaynted friend". It has been judged "one of the outstanding compilations of travel literature to be published in England" (Parker). The remainder of Willes's life is uncertain. Gabriel Harvey called him "a greate travelour, very well lernid" (Smith). Edmund Spenser mourned his death in the 'Teares of the Muses' (first published in 1591, but possibly written earlier, or incorporating earlier material). Francis Meres lauded Willes in 'Palladis tamia' (1598) among the English Latin poets who "have attained good report and honourable advancement in the Latin empyre" (Smith). Richard Hakluyt used material from Willes's 'History of Travayle in the Principal Navigations' (1589; 1598–1600)" (Payne).

Eden, Richard (c.1520–1576), had a varied career, in the treasury (1544–6), as a chemist, and dabbled in in alchemy, being employed by Richard Whalley, a prominent Nottinghamshire gentleman (and subsequent prisoner at Her Majesty's pleasure), search for the secret of turning base metal into gold. In 1552 Eden became a secretary to Sir William Cecil, who hoped to find gold by means of exploration and discovery of the Far East. Eden's translation of considerable portions of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's 'De orbe novo decades', Gonzalo Oviedo's 'Natural hystoria de las Indias', and other works, and publication as 'The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India' (1555), is considered his most important work, but he also revised Thomas Gemini's abbreviation of Vesalius's 'De humani corporis fabrica' (1559), translated Martin Cortes's 'Breve compendio de la sphaera y de la arte de navigar' as 'The Arte of Navigation' (1561), the first such work in English, and Ludovico de Varthema's 'Itinerario', which was included by Richard Willes here.