This is the first major study to comprehensively analyse English
encounters with the New World in the sixteenth century and their impact
on early English understandings of America and changing approaches to
exploration and settlement. The book traces the dynamism of early
English encounters with the Americas and the many cultural influences
that shaped English understandings of the new lands across the Atlantic.
It illustrates that rather than being a period of inconsequential
colonial failure in the Americas, the sixteenth century was in fact an
era of assessment, adaptation and application that culminated in the
survival of the first Anglo-American colony at Jamestown. Encountering
early America will appeal to students and scholars working on early
English colonialism in North America and European cultural encounters
with the New World.