This chapter considers the fundamental task of geography—writing the world—and how it has been examined in historical geography. In addressing how historical geographers have used others’ words as source material, we survey scholarship that has engaged with issues of genre, authorship, and audience. We exemplify these themes through an examination of the production and circulation of The Journal of the Geographical Society of London and show how authorship, authority, and authorisation were connected in making geographical knowledge in the nineteenth century. We show how practices of editorial evaluation and peer review shaped the words used to describe the world and to discipline and authorise particular geographical voices. The chapter concludes by prompting further attention to the circulation of geographical knowledge in popular periodicals; to the role of peer review in shaping and endorsing particular geographical vocabularies and modalities of writing; and to the ways historical geographers might approach the task of writing the world in new ways.