[Untitled Composite Atlas of the World.]

£50,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Important composite atlas assembled by Robert Wilkinson circa 1781 (the latest date on any map) in the first years of his career. Nothing is known about Wilkinson’s background; he emerges in 1779, when he took over John Bowles’s print- and map-publishing and selling business, which he operated until his death in 1825. That this is an early Wilkinson publication is demonstrated by the small number of original Wilkinson imprints present: the plate of the orrery and plan of Gibraltar. Wilkinson’s engraved trade-card / label can be found on the front paste-down. The majority of the items come from three sources: John Bowles publications, often issued jointly with others but now owned, at least in part, by Wilkinson, on a few of which he inserted his own name; maps from William Faden jr. and from Robert Sayer; there are a small number of maps published by Carington Bowles (John’s son and sometime partner, sometime rival), Andrew Dury and Peter Andre. Spread through the atlas are several genuine rarities: Samuel Dunn’s plate of the orrery; the plate of shipping and maritime flags published by John and Carington Bowles; Faden’s map of the British Colonies in North America, 1777; the four-sheet Delarochette map of Germany; the two-sheet Delarochette map of Minorca and single-sheet St. Philip’s Castle, both published by Faden, and Dury’s two-sheet map of the Provinces of Delhi, Agrah and Oude, 1777. There are apparently unrecorded states of the Bowles ‘London directory’ plan of London

• Year: 1781

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