Mapping London from Daniel Crouch Rare Books

Daniel Crouch Rare Books has just issued their Catalogue III, Mapping London. Crouch is a specialist in maps and the associated types of material, such as sea charts, plans, atlases and globes. They focus on antiquarian examples, though there are a few items this time that make it into the last century. In this catalogue, Crouch has centered on one small corner of the globe, the city of London, and occasionally, a few miles of surrounding lands. Since most maps are targeted right on the city, as it follows the banks and bend in the River Thames, thumbing through this catalogue gives a bird’s eye view of how much the city has grown over the four centuries from the 15th through the 19th century. Naturally, a current map would show much greater expansion still, but London looks barely more than a large village 400 to 500 years ago.