The travels of Sir John Mandeville first saw the light of day in the mid 13th century and states in the introduction that it’s intended as a guidebook for pilgrims venturing to the Holy Land. Unfortunately most of the guidebook information is wildly out-of-date. The travels of John Mandeville, despite posing as a guidebook, is actually just a sort of combination of many eleventh and twelfth century sources. Mandeville ripped pieces from one source bits from another and put them together in a big melting pot and one continuous narrative. A storyteller at heart, Mandeville quickly leaves the guidebook behind and starts spinning tales. Now based on events described within the travels of John Mandeville we can say fairly definitively that it was written after 1360 which would seem to with the 1366 date that Mandeville gifts for when he finished his narrative. Now while there is no original manuscript known to survive we do have all early copy from 1371.