Americas: General, North from Bryars and Bryars

London, 1740. Copper engraving, 30 x 16.5 cm, black and white, blank verso, lower corners torn but restored. Contemporary plan of the abortive British siege of St Augustine in Spanish Florida during the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The Governor of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, commanded a force of regular troops, colonial militia and Native American allies, with naval support. The… Read more about this item

Duluth, MN., c. 1935. Lithographed pictorial map, 47.5 x 72.5 cm, printed in colours, laid on linen; drawn and published by cartoonist Ray DeWitt Handy (1879-1959), playfully illustrating tall tales in the life of ‘America's Only Folk-Lore Character’. Hardy worked for the Duluth News Tribune and also wrote and illustrated the children’s book ‘Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue… Read more about this item

London, Hunt &: Clarke, , 1828. Lithographed map, approx 62.5 x 21 cm, black and white, slight offsetting, blank verso; published in: ‘A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, leading to the Discovery of the Mississippi and Bloody River’. After a lonely and hazardous journey (especially after he quarrelled and parted company with Major Stephen Long’s expedition) Beltrami (1779-1855) claimed… Read more about this item

Nuremberg, c. 1740. Two copper engravings on one sheet, each 24 x 29.5 cm, original hand colour, trivial spotting, blank verso. Plan and view of the successful British attack on the wealthy and strategic Spanish harbour of Portobello in Panama under Admiral Vernon (for whom the Washington family estate Mount Vernon was named). Portobello fell within a day… Read more about this item

London, 1840. Steel engraving, approx 32 x 39 cm, original hand colour, light toning, blank verso, numbered in an old hand in the margin. With inset views of Broadway and City Hall, and detail of railroads, ferries and principal public buildings, 40 of which are numbered in a key top right. Developed areas are shaded, and other parts of… Read more about this item

London, c. 1960. Pictorial map of 19th century North America, sheet size 63 x 87.5 cm, compiled and illustrated by Fran Downie, printed in colours, trivial wear to folds, a couple of trivial spots, blank verso. Danny Arnold was a Canadian actor and impresario whose vaudeville and wild west shows were a feature of the British seaside from the… Read more about this item

London, c. 1851. Steel engraving, 27 x 33 cm, original outline colour, imprint in lower margin cut close, blank verso; engraved by John Rapkin for the ‘Illustrated Atlas’; black and white vignettes of Halifax, Ontario, and a cod fishery, engraved by John Rogers after A. Fussell. Map

Nuremberg, 1746. Copper engraving, 50 x 57 cm, original hand colour, blank verso. Map of the Americas prepared for the Homann firm by Johann Matthias Hase, professor of mathematics in Wittemberg, on his stereographic horizontal projection; Hase died in 1742, and many of his maps were published posthumously. Hase’s map replaced one of 1710, engraved by the founder of… Read more about this item

Washington, Gales &: Seaton,, 1827. Copper engraving, 28.5 x 83 cm, one or two minor restorations to verso, old folds, blank verso. Published in a report to Congress, ‘Letter from the postmaster general transmitting a report of General Bernard, of surveys of routes for a post road from Baltimore to Philadelphia’. The Postmaster General at that time was John… Read more about this item

Nuremberg, c. 1737. Copper engraving, 51 x 57 cm, original hand colour, upper margin trimmed to platemark, a couple of trivial spots and stains, blank verso. Derived from individual maps of British possessions in North America by Hermann Moll which were published in his 1729 Atlas Minor (revised 1736). Homann’s version arranges four maps one one sheet: Newfoundland and… Read more about this item

London, J. Macgowan, 1780. Copper engraving, 32 x 42.5 cm, modern hand colour, blank verso. Published during the American Revolutionary War, this is one of the earliest maps engraved by John Cary, who became one of the leading cartographic engravers, publishers and globe-makers of the period. His first recorded map seems to have been ‘a plan of the navigable… Read more about this item

London, c. 1851. Steel engraving, 25.5 x 33 cm, original outline colour, blank verso; engraved by John Rapkin for the ‘Illustrated Atlas’; black and white vignettes of Kingston, Ontario, and Niagara Falls engraved by Robert Wallis.

London, 1882. Lithographed city plan, two sheets joined, sheet size, 43 x 64.5 cm, map 39 x 58.5 cm, original colour, coloured lines denote omnibus routes, blank verso, published in Letts’s Popular Atlas. Ultimately derived from the SDUK but reflecting Haussman’s redevelopment of the city centre under Napoleon III, our example is from one of the last editions of… Read more about this item

London,, 1922. Engraved chart, 95 x 66 cms, engraved by Davies and Company, black and white (lighthouses/beacons highlighted in colour), first published in 1885 with corrections to 1922, ink stamp to lower right hand corner, folded into 12 panels, blank verso. Covering the mouth of the river, between Rangoon (Yangon) and the sea, showing villages, pagodas, beacons, waterways, sands… Read more about this item

London, 1840. Steel engraving, 38 x 30 cms, original hand colour, blank verso. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in 1826 with the high-minded aim of making 'useful' information available to self-taught members of the working and lower middle classes. Some of the material was decidedly abstruse, subscribers fell away and the Society was wound… Read more about this item

London, 1882. Lithographed map, 40 x 32.5 cms, original colour, blank verso, from Letts’s Popular Atlas. Our example is from one of the last editions of the atlas published by the original firm of stationers, map and diary makers. Charles Letts, grandson of the firm’s founder, remained in business under his own name, but in 1884 the Letts, Son… Read more about this item

Paris, 1772. Copper engraving, 32 x 36, engraved by R. Spadaccini, blank and white, slight toning to right of centrefold, blank verso. Engraved for Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, one of the great works of the Enlightenment. Maps depicting the purported voyage of the Spaniard Bartholomew de Fonte, supposedly between Hudson Bay and the Pacific in the mid seventeenth-century, began to… Read more about this item

Liverpool, c. 1853. Lithograph, 30.5 x 23.5 cms, original hand-colour, blank verso. Drake’s New Albion marked just north of San Fransico; the new ‘Mormon Settlement’ (Salt Lake City, founded 1847), is also marked. The borders of the former Republic of Texas were disputed, which may account for some minor inaccuracies, although the overall depiction of borders here reflects the… Read more about this item

London, 1831. Copper engraving, 21.5 x 26 cms, original hand-colour in outline, blank verso. From ‘A Modern and Ancient General Atlas, comprehending all the Empires, Kingdoms, States in the World’. Lizars trained as a painter, but in 1812 took over the Edinburgh publishing and engraving business established by his father. Map

Paris, 1683. Copper engraving, 15 x 10.2 cms, black and white, French text on verso. Distinctive map of California as an island, from Mallet’s ‘Description de l’Univers’, first published in Paris in 1683 and reprinted with German text in Frankfurt the following year. Mallet was a military engineer, cartographer and mathematician in the service of the French King, Louis… Read more about this item