Brisbane Courier-Mail February 8, 2003

Review by John Wright

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Howgego, a former physics teacher, spent 15 years researching ``Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800’’, travelling the world for much of his adult life and following in the explorers’ footsteps.

Researching their journeys wherever he could find local information about them _ he reads several languages including Spanish, French, German, Greek, Arabic and Portugese _ he compiled a massive notebook database.

The end result, a history commissioned by specialist Australian publisher Hordern House, took him two years to write.

Weighing more than 3kg, it contains more than a million words and 1200 pages, 7500 entries for known explorers and ships in more than 2300 detailed articles and a staggering 20,000 bibliographical citations.

``The bibliographies took an immense amount of time because they are totally exhaustive…there are no books missing, nothing of significance in any language,’’ said Howgego recently from his home in Caterham, Surrey.

``I don’t believe there is anything like this anywhere in the world, especially a book which gives complete bibliographies. I still can’t believe I’ve written every word of it.’’

Another thing that has surprised him, he says, is that although his encyclopedia was intended and written as a serious work of scholarship, it has found an immediate readership market _ despite its $295 price tag _ with non-academics. And academia itself is astonished by his accomplishment.

``This stands alone as a reference work,’’ says Queensland-based historian Miriam Estensen, a Flinders biographer and author of `Discovery: The Quest for the Great South Land’ (Allen & Unwin) .

``I have never seen anything like this. It adds immeasurably to the store of knowledge about world exploration, summarizing the lives and activities of thousands of explorers. It is a huge book.’’

What gives `Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800’ an assured place in both public and private libraries is both its subject matter and its breathtaking scope and detail.

Every known explorer, every documented voyage or journey of exploration up to 1800, every known ship they sailed in _ they are all here, from Thuthmosis 1, the 18th Dynasty king who led military expeditions out of Egypt across the Euphrates, to Mungo Park, who looked for the source of the Niger in 1795/6 and Alexander von Humboldt, who explored Venezuela at the turn of the 19th century.

Although the book contains no maps, its alphabetical list arrangement is absolutely comprehensive, attractively written and, for anyone with even a passing interest in the history of exploration, compelling reading.

``One could hardly criticize it for any omissions or errors,’’ says Estensen. ``It belongs in every public and university library and every secondary school.’’

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A second, 750,000-word encyclopedia of exploration covering the first half of the 19th century _ including the exploration of the Australian interior and New Zealand _ is in preparation and will be published this year.