La description de XVII. Provinces, avec les Terres Circonvoicins, a Scavoir Champagnie, Picardie, Liege, Retelle, &c.Antwerp, Jan Huyssens, 1652. 4to (18 x 14.5 cm). With a double-page letterpress title-page, with a frame built up from typographic ornaments, and 39 unnumbered double-page engraved maps of the northern and southern Low Countries by Jacob Aertsz. Colom, each map coloured in outline. Interleaved with 38 blank leaves and with a manuscript table of contents ([3], [3 blank] pp.) at the end. Later 17th-century mottled calf.

Double-page title-page and 39 double-page maps.Second known copy of a pocket-atlas, published at Antwerp but containing a selection of the maps of the Low Countries originally published by Jacob Aertsz. Colom at Amsterdam in 1635 with the title De Vyerighe Colom, the title Colom had first used for his famous pilot guide in 1632, and the name he had given to his Amsterdam printing office, where he worked from 1622 to his death in 1673 as a bookseller, printer and mapmaker. The only other copy known is at the Royal Library in Brussels. The Vyerighe Colom, with 47 maps and 3 plates, and with extensive text in Dutch and French, went through several editions in the 17th century, but it was once thought that all editions before his death in 1673 had been published at Amsterdam by Colom himself. The Royal Library copy, like the present one, contains 39 maps, but each contains one map not in the other, so there are forty in total: the present copy includes “Drentiae”, not in the Royal Library copy, which includes “Le terres entre la Meuse Vahal et Rhin”, not present here. The maps are also bound in a different order.The present edition is of great interest and gives cause to review Colom's activities. It is printed from Colom’s plates, so Colom may have licenced the Antwerp publisher to produce a variant edition of his Vyerighe Colom to broaden his market, possibly reacting to the signing of the Peace of Münster in 1648, which finally ended the Eighty Years’ War and opened trade and communication between the northern and southern Low Countries. Jan Huyssens made an entirely new and practical atlas out of Colom's Vyerighe Colom. He omitted all text and the three plates that do not show maps, and selected only maps of general interest, leaving out the map of the ancient Low Countries and such typical Dutch maps as the separate maps of the polders De Zype, Beemster, Wormer, Purmer, Byllemermeer and Waterland, also - at least in the present copy - completely rearranging the maps, more in order of their geographical sequence. The title suggests that Huyssens originally planned to include a text, so the present extremely rare edition may be the only surviving result of an abandoned project.l Koeman & Van der Krogt 365.23 (IIIB, pp. 644-645) (2 copies: the present & Royal Library Brussels); UniCat 99095764 (Royal Library Brussels only); cf. Koeman II, Col 1 (1635 Amsterdam ed.); not in KVK; STCV; WorldCat.