The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. Three volumes, published in 1887, are devoted to the diary of William Hedges (1632-1701), the first Agent of the East India Company in Bengal, and its seventeenth-century colonial context.

A three-volume 1887 edition of seventeenth-century documents about the British in Bengal, including the diary of William Hedges.