Scarce first edition of Loggan's celebrated work containing magnificent views of Cambridge University, in a fine contemporary binding.

Including a mezzotint portrait of Charles Seymour, 5th Duke of Somerset and the chancellor of the university. The plan of Cambridge offers a birds-eye perspective of the town, with a key to the university colleges. Alongside a depiction of the different costumes worn by academics, Loggan includes 29 other views, some double-page and folding, showcasing each college with exquisite definition.

The mapmaker
David Loggan (1634-1692) was originally of Anglo-Scottish heritage, but lived in Gdansk for the first two decades of his life. He trained there under Willem Hondius and under Crispijn van de Passe in Amsterdam. He moved to England around 1657 and became engraver to Oxford University. He sold a printing press to the university, and was also commissioned to produced title pages and plates for books produced by the tutors, as well as a book on academic robes. His work at Oxford culminated with the publishing of "Oxford illustrate" in 1675. From 1676, Loggan began preparing plates for "Cantabrigia illustrata", which he published in 1690 - the same year he became the official engraver to Cambridge University.

Loggan died in 1692 and left debts of £140 with "little remaining substance left except a few copper grav'd plates." John Overton bought the plates, and when retired in 1707, his son Henry Overton (I) (1676?-1751) took over the business. He continued the business much as his father, although his output of interesting maps is rather smaller; his major atlas project was a volume of two-sheet maps modelled on Moll's 'World Described' or Senex's 'English Atlas', but it is now rare.

Overton reissued Loggan's publications of Oxford in the early eighteenth century. Overton did advertise the forth coming publication of the the Cambridge, though the work was never published. Hence the notably few examples of Loogan's Cambridge are extant.

Provenance
Anthony Grey (1645-1702) was the 11th Earl of Kent, admitted to Trinity College Cambridge in 1658. Sharing in surname but not lineage, Thomas Philip de Grey (1781-1859) was the second Earl de Grey, admitted to St John's college in 1801. de Grey went on to become Privy Counsellor, Lord of the Admiralty, and a Knight of the Garter.