In 1260 Brunetto Latini, a native of Florence, was exiled and went to live in France. While there he followed the example of others of his period and compiled a kind of encyclopaedia which he called Li Livres dou Tresor.

In 1802 a young man called Dupré informed the editor of the Monthly Magazine or British Register that Latini had come from France to England as tutor to the son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III. While here he had written a series of letters to Guido Cavalcanti, a Florentine poet, describing what he saw in England and that the letters had come into Dupre's possession. During 1802 several free translations from these letters ran through the magazine and no suspicion of their authenticity seems to have been aroused, though when a description of an elephant, said to have been seen in the Tower of London, appeared a correspondent pointed out that it seemed to have been derived from a contemporary Bestiarium.