This essay discusses one of the most important travel documents from the medieval English period, The Book of John Mandeville. The Book became the most popular travel narrative of the English Middle Ages, and describes the author's purported encounters with many different cultures. The Book first appeared in 1357, its author claiming to be an English knight born and bred in St Albans who left England in 1322 and travelled around the world for just over thirty-five years. The author's claims and descriptions of foreign lands were, for the most part, accepted without question, and the work came immediately to enjoy what Suzanne Akbari refers to as ‘extraordinary popularity’. Within a few short years it had been translated into almost every European vernacular. It was not until the late nineteenth century that comparisons with other contemporary texts proved ‘beyond question for the most part, that the author had in fact 'done it at Home’. No trace has ever been found of a real John Mandeville who might have written this book, and whoever wrote it never travelled to the places he describes. It is a compilation of several sources (both learned and anecdotal) whose author made several additions and changes to his sources, so that it forms a coherent narrative of his ‘journeys’ throughout the world. Iain Higgins reads The Book as multiple, as containing within the text several different genres: