English compiler of travel and discovery writings who continued the encyclopaedic collections begun by the British geographer Richard Hakluyt in Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes; Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells, by Englishmen and Others (4 vol., 1625; 20 vol., 1905–07).

Purchas studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and at the University of Oxford. He was vicar first of a Thames-side parish in Essex and later in London, and he met many seafarers in the course of his duties. As an editor and compiler he sought to interest the general public of his day. During a time when travel literature had the patriotic purpose of inspiring Englishmen to engage in overseas expansion and enterprise, his collections were read with enthusiasm. Though Purchas lacked the editorial genius of Hakluyt, his collection is frequently the only source of information on important questions relating to geographical history and early exploration. Nearly two centuries after it was first published, Purchas his Pilgrimes was the favourite reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.