Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library

Harper, Tom

£18.99

The British Library’s map collection is the national cartographic collection of Britain and numbers around four million maps dating from 15 CE to 2017 CE. These include road maps drawn for 13th century pilgrims and sea charts for 17th-century pirates. They include the first printed map to show the Americas and the last to show English-controlled Calais. They include the world’s biggest and smallest atlases. They include maps for kings and queens, popes, ministers, schoolchildren, soldiers, tourists. There are maps which changed the world. As well as comprehensively showcasing the varied and surprising treasures of the British Library’s ‘banquet of maps’ for the first time, this book will examine the evolution of humanity’s perceptions of the world through maps.

Out of stock

Publish Date: 01/10/2020
ISBN: 9780712353328 Category: Tag:

Description

From the publication in 1595 of the first “atlas” by the Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator, the term has become a universally adopted title for books containing accurate, uniform and evenly spread maps of all or some of the world. This is an atlas with a difference. Few of the maps in this book could reasonably be called “accurate” in the modern sense and could almost certainly not be used to plan a journey. Yet this atlas can help us to travel in a way that regular atlases do not, because by looking at old maps and getting to know their stories we can be transported back to the times in which they were made. The generous, full-color illustrations of each map in this large-format book range from the Klencke Atlas (1660) to Hokusai’s map of China (1840-41), from a 1682 pirate map of Guatemala to 20th-century cartographic postcards featuring maps of Australia.

Additional information

Weight 1247 g
Dimensions 279 × 222 × 20 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

272

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

912 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K