POLO, MARCO

born c. 1254, Venice , or Curzola, Venetian Dalmatia [now Korcula, Croatia] died January 8, 1324, Venice Marco Polo in Tatar attire. Venetian merchant and adventurer, who traveled from Europe to Asia in 1271-95, remaining in China for 17 of those years, and whose Il milione ("The Million"), known in English as the Travels of Marco Polo, is a classic of travel literature. Additional reading A Franco-Italian text of Marco Polo's book, generally considered very near to the lost original, has been collated with many other early manuscripts in Luigi Foscolo Benedetto (ed.), Il Milione, prima edizione integrale (1928). This important edition, with its long and detailed introduction (in Italian) dealing with the complex problems related to the text, has been corrected in places by Gabriella Ronchi, Milione: Le divisament dou monde (1982). The following works, now somewhat dated, have been standard texts for decades: Henry Yule (trans. and ed.), Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, new ed., rev., 4 vol. (1913-16, reissued 1967), and The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian: Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, 3rd ed., rev. throughout by Henri Cordier, 2 vol. (1903, reissued with a memoir of Henry Yule in 3 vols., 1993). A modern, readable, and dependable version in English is Ronald Latham (trans.), The Travels of Marco Polo (1958, reissued 1988). The itineraries of the Polos are critically examined in Milton Rugoff, Marco Polo's Adventures in China (1964), which follows Polo's tale brilliantly step by step with illustrations from many different sources. A scholarly and very readable introduction to the subject of Polo, his journeys, his book, and his times is Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia (1960; originally published in Italian, 1957). John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (1999), is one of the best studies.