A fine example of Blaeu's volume of England & Wales with French text, bound in full red morocco.

In this atlas, all the counties of England and Wales are shown, surrounded by splendid illustrations and accompanied by pages of text. Blaeu derived the cartographic contents from various editions of John Speed's 'Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain' originally published in 1611, while the texts is largely copied from William Camden's 'Britannia'. Each map exhibits the craftsmanship and artistry of the Blaeu workshop, with their ornate cartouches, heraldic crests and intricate calligraphy. Blaeu originally published the volume as the fourth part of his 1645 'Atlas novus'. Later in 1662 the maps reappeared in volume five of his Atlas Maior, perhaps the finest cartographic work ever produced.

Willem Blaeu (1638) was the founder of the Blaeu cartographic dynasty, the finest mapmakers of the Golden Age of Dutch cartography. After moving to Amsterdam and establishing a shop in 1605, he was granted a privilege to print a navigational guide. Two years later, he produced a set of large carte-à-figure wall maps of the four continents and published a pilot with coastal profiles to accompany the sailing instructions. His greatest feat, however, was to publish a pair of globes 68 centimetres in diameter in 1616. He also made giant metal globes for Prince Crain Patenglo of Makasar and Christina of Sweden. Willem's sons joined him in the firm, with the eldest Joan (1598) quickly assuming the lead. They produced their first atlas together in 1630, the 'Atlas Appendix'. The title was deliberately chosen to position is as a supplement to the well-respected atlases of Abraham Ortelius and Gerard Mercator, and it mostly contained maps from their stock of plates. Five years later, they produced their 'Atlas Novus' with more than twice the number of maps in the 'Appendix', which was published in four languages. After Willem died, Joan expanded the 'Atlas Novus' into the 'Atlas Maior', the largest and grandest atlas of its time.