A Geographical Description of the Four Parts of the World taken from the notes and works of the famous Monsier Sanson, Geographer to the French King …also a treatise of travel and another of traffic ... the whole illustrated with variety of useful and delightful maps and figures

London, 1670. Folio. Engraved title and 24 double-page and folding, engraved maps, full Contemporary Calf Gilt, an excellent copy. 

An exellent example of an atlas by one of the most interesting, and most active publishers of illustrated books in post-Restoration London. The 24 maps were engraved by Francis Lamb, Thomas Burnford and Wenceslas Hollar.Blome’s was the first new folio world atlas to be published in England since 1627, the year Speed’s Prospect appeared, which also relied on continental geographical models.  Furthermore, this is the first folio (and quite possibly the very first) world atlas wholly engraved, printed and published in England.

Blome’s principal handicap in the production of the atlas was the lack of a domestic mapmaking environment comparable with that existing in continental cities such as Paris and Amsterdam, which would have supplied more up-to-date models for the maps. A secondary problem was how to finance the atlas.  Evidently, at the outset of his career, he lacked the necessary money to fund the expensive process of buying the copperplates, hiring engravers,etc.Instead, Blome sought to finance the atlas byselling subscriptions.While not the first to use this means (Wenceslas Hollar sought to underwrite his plan of London by the same means in 1658), Blome was the first to exploit the opportunities of subscriptions on a large scale, relying on subscriptions to finance all his major publications. The approach was very simple.  The subscriber would pay a proportion of the fee in advance, and the balance on delivery of the volume.  In return, the subscriber’s arms would be engraved on the map of his choice. When it came to subsequent editions, existing subscribers were evidently approached for a ‘renewal fee’; if they declined, then their arms were removed, and a new subscriber’s arms substituted.  The map of North America, for example, was dedicated to three different men between 1670 and 1693. At the other extreme, the map of Barbary in the First Edition contained the shields of 36 Earls, Barons, Knights, etc. The Geographical Description seems to have been relatively successful, and there were later editions, under the title Cosmography and Geography, with text by Bernard Varenius, in 1682, 1683 and 1693.

Provenance: From the Library of Williamstrip, Coln St Aldwyns, family seat 1788 to 2008, and thereafter Mill House, Coln St Aldwyns. Sir Michael Hicks Beach Bt. Succeeded his father as 9th Baronet of Beverston in 1854. He became Conservative Member of Parliament in 1864 and served twice as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1885-1886 and 1895-1902. In 1906 he was raised to Viscount St. Aldwyn and in 1915 became the first Earl St. Aldwyn.

Wing B3214.