Mandeville's Travels and the Anglo-French Moment

For six hundred years readers have reflected on the autobiographical passages in Mandeville's Travels. The author presents himself as an English knight and pilgrim, born and raised in St Albans, who left his homeland in 1322 and returned from his adventures thirty-five years later, composing his account of his travels, according to different versions of the texts, in either 1356 or 1351. Over the years scholars have sought to identify the author with one of a number of John Mandevilles living in fourteenth-century England