It was suggested, in the light of Ptolemy and later medieval geographers, that if a ship sailed far enough south it would reach landfall. This was in spite of Francis Drake's reports to the contrary that no vast continent existed below the straits of Magellan, as Magellan himself had supposed. It had certainly not been the intention of Drake to either prove or disprove the existence of a Great South Land — he had merely been driven by a gale to 57 degrees south. The islands that he did discover, and which he named the Elizabethides, are now believed to be part of the Tierra del Fuego group. Yet these and other discoveries, which were thought to be projections of a southern continent, only served to heighten the belief in a Great South Land. Likewise Captain Davis, who promoted the search for a southern continent to the west of Chile; ‘Davis Land’ was to become synonymous with Terra Australis incognita.
Not until Cook's second voyage, in 1772–75, was the belief in a great southern continent finally laid to rest. Yet this did not put an end to the production of imaginary voyages with their setting in an unknown south land; Restif de la Bretonne's La découverte australe, one of the strangest of imaginary voyages set in a utopian south land, was published as late as 1781. It would seem then that, despite the knowledge of the Australian coastline and the refutation of a Great South Land, increased exploration had the effect of diminishing expectations but not the continued imagining of Terra Australis incognita. The reality, of course, was that all that remained of the Great South Land was Terra Australis cognita.
Seventeenth and eighteenth century exploration was responsible for three broad kinds of travel literature: genuine travel accounts; imaginary or extraordinary voyages; and a third group which might be termed travel liars, or pseudo travellers, whose intention it was to deceive.
This second group, imaginary voyages, were to become almost as popular in their day as authentic travel accounts. The genre included works of a realistic, philosophical, utopian and fantastic nature and, while not generally written to deceive, they have, in a few notable cases, done just that. For instance, it is difficult to comprehend anyone believing in the fantastic tales of Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen, Peter Wilkin's flying men, or Cyrano de Bergerac's trips to the moon powered by bottles of morning dew. On the other hand, an experienced deceiver like Defoe was to fool almost everyone with his armchair traveller Captain Singleton; it is with good reason that Defoe's A new voyage round the world is politely referred to as an apocryphal voyage.
Imaginary voyages are often classified into types. First there is the ‘fantastic’ voyage, in which the only limit placed upon the narrative is the writer's imagination. Next there is the more ‘realistic’ voyage which, by a ‘stretch of the imagination’, might be true. (These ‘realistic’ imaginary voyages made use of conventional forms of travel, provided biographical information, details of geographical locations etc.). Then there is the satirical or allegorical narrative describing a voyage to an ideal commonwealth, utopia, or merely to an appropriate setting in which to air non-conformist ideas.
These divisions are, of course, not mutually exclusive. Cyrano de Bergerac's voyages, for instance, were as much fantastic as they were satirical. Imaginary voyages proved a convenient form with which to attack governments, religions and customs; particularly in France, where a lack of intellectual freedom prevailed. This accounts in part for the bibliographical puzzles that are associated with much seventeenth and eighteenth century imaginary voyage literature. Anonymous, vague, or fictitious authors, as well as false imprints, abound.
