Printed and manuscript works by famous names in map-making, including Gerardus Mercator, Christopher Saxton and John Speed.
Many of the finest examples of maps come from the Rylands collection including the Ulm 1482 edition of Ptolemy's Geographia with woodcut maps based on contemporary discoveries, the Basle 1550 edition of Munster's Cosmography with accurate town plans, two mid-sixteenth century manuscript portolan charts and a hand-coloured copy of the 1636 Mercator/Hondius Atlas.
English maps in the collections include the earliest (1579) series of survey maps of England and Wales, by Saxton, the first edition of Speed's Theatre of the empire of Great Britain (1611), Bowen's practical road-atlas, Britannia depicta (1720) and Allport's 1822 lithograph of a 1565 "Mappe of part of the township of Leverpoole". There is a small selection of nineteenth century local maps.
For more information on Liverpool guidebooks, see our blog post here.
This hand-coloured woodcut map of the world appears in the first German printed atlas, which was based on the rediscovered work of Ptolemy (AD 90–168) a Greek astronomer and geographer, whose Geographia (or Cosmographia) gave lists of places with their longitudes and latitudes. The map stretches from Shetland to central China and has the engraved signature of Johann von Arnheim, the first map signed by its cutter. This Ulm edition of Ptolemy, published by Leinhart Holle, was the first to address the problems of printing relief in map illustrations, and became the model for numerous other cartographical works featuring woodcut maps.
Image: Claudius Ptolemaeus, Cosmographia (Ulm: Lienhart Holle, 1482). Classmark: Early Printed Books, SPEC Inc.Ryl.63/OS
Ptolemy’s calculations overestimated the length of the Mediterranean and enclosed the Indian Ocean by connecting the eastern coast of Asia (from about the location of modern Hanoi) with east Africa in a belt of ‘unknown land’. His overestimate of the size of Europe and Asia encouraged Columbus’s belief that he could navigate west from Europe to Asia. Despite its inaccuracies, the Geographia was a definitive text until it was superseded by Mercator's Atlas of 1585-95, and it appeared in many luxurious manuscript and printed copies.
Gerhard Kremer (1512-94), known by the Latinized form of his name, Mercator, was a Flemish land surveyor, instrument maker and cartographer whose name is particularly associated with the most commonly used projection in cartography. He is noted for his engraved maps, highly regarded for their accuracy, fine engraving and calligraphy (Mercator himself was also an engraver and scribe). Amongst his major cartographic improvements was the correct measurement of the length of the Mediterranean in his Atlas, the first edition of which popularized the term ‘atlas’ for a collection of maps. In 1606, Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), a renowned Dutch mapmaker, bought up Mercator’s plates and added 36 of his own to later editions of the Atlas, published in Amsterdam by Jodocus’s son Henry (see Atlas, Amsterdam: Henry Hondius, 1628. Classmark: SPEC Ryl.AA.33.)
Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus (London: W. Stansby, 1625,1626). Classmark: Early Printed Books, SPEC H41.5
Hondius’s map also appears in the English work Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travell alongside a map of China by Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). The much-reprinted work by Samuel Purchas (1577?-1626) was partly based on manuscripts left by Richard Hakluyt (1552?-1616) and includes amongst the list of maps in the first part ‘Zebra described in picture’ with a fine woodcut illustration. Published in four folio volumes in 1625, this was the largest work to have been printed in England by this date.
The first half contains accounts of voyages to India, China, Japan, Africa, and the Mediterranean, and the second half contains narratives of voyages to America and the West Indies, although Samuel Purchas himself was reckoned never to have travelled further than 200 miles from his Essex birthplace.
This atlas by Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782), contains 42 maps and plans of China, the Tartar kingdom, Korea, and Tibet which were reprinted without authorization from the maps of China drawn between 1708 and 1718 by nine Jesuits acting on the instructions of the emperor K'ang-hsi. The maps were later published to accompany the four-volumes (Paris, 1735) by Father Jean-Baptiste du Halde (1674–1743).
J-B. Bourguignon d’Anville, Nouvel atlas de la Chine (La Haye,1737). Classmark: Early Printed Books, SPEC GR.2.2.5.
This work was a testament both to Chinese culture and to Jesuit propaganda, and remained the principal authority on China for the rest of the 18th century. French cartography was outstanding both for its accuracy and for its decorative qualities, and the maps of each province are ornamented with lively scenes of people and animals, including porcupines and turtles.
