The scarce English edition of the Mercator/Hondius atlas in original colour
Atlas or A Geographicke description of the Regions. Counties and Kingdoms of the world,
through Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, represented by New & Exact Maps. Translated by Henry Hexham, Quarter-master to the Regiment of Colonell Goring.
Amsterdam,
Henry Hondius and John Iohnson,
Anno 1636 - 1638.
Two volumes, folio (515 by 330mm), engraved title-pages, with letterpress overslips over both titles and the imprint of volume one, and double-page engraved portrait of Mercator and Hondius, with contemporary hand-colour in full and heightened with silver, 196 double-page engraved maps in fine contemporary outline hand-colour, contemporary Oxford mauve morocco, with gilt panels and floral corner-pieces and central arabesque, spines decorated with gilt lozenges in ten compartments with nine raised bands, all edges gilt, original marbled pastedowns.
15140
notes:
The English edition of the Mercator-Hondius 'Atlas' contained some twenty new maps: eight in the first volume and twelve in the second. This dramatic revision was "greater than in any of the former editions of the atlas" (Koeman).
Mercator's maps of England, Scotland, and Ireland have been corrected and improved with new vignettes, and several others bear the imprint of Henricus Hondius. In the second volume, one can see the rise of Janssonius within the publish...
Mercator's maps of England, Scotland, and Ireland have been corrected and improved with new vignettes, and several others bear the imprint of Henricus Hondius. In the second volume, one can see the rise of Janssonius within the publish...
bibliography:
Koeman II, Me 41A and 41B (v2); van der Krogt 1:341.1a and 1:341.2B.
provenance:
“more knowledge of the Eastern Seas than perhaps any other man”
Admiralty chart of northern Taiwan
Admiralty chart of the harbour’s and Anchorages in the Red Sea
Admiralty chart of the South East Coast of China
“Cook’s going out 1776”
Sicily and her waters
Rare chart of Panaji
Collection of early nineteenth century Admiralty charts
The Coronation of Queen Victoria
The first aeroplane?
Rare chart of the East coast of Africa
A Latin version of Aveline’s view of London
Steel’s rare chart of the Indian Ocean
Norie’s rare chart of the Pacific, and a tale of ‘Moby Dick’
Wren’s rejected plan for post fire London
Views of Tangiers
Rare chart of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands
Early van Keulen chart of the North Atlantic
Views of Tangiers
The first atlas on Mercator’s Projection
From the inventory of the Van Keulen family of cartographers 








