The first comprehensive book on China widely available to European readers was that compiled by the Spanish Jesuit priest Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza. It was first published in Spanish in Rome in 1585, followed by a number of translations and editions through into the early 16th C.  An Italian edition of 1588 was owned by Lord Macartney, leader of the first British embassy to China in 1792, a couple of hundred years later, attesting to the book’s continuing interest. A Venice 1588 edition in the original vellum with one of the ties still attached stimulated an interest in the work. In the year of Drake’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, this little book was published, and in an English translation of the same year, the printer is at pains to dissociate himself from anything remotely pro-Spanish in the work. An account of the work can be found in the attachment.