Rare pocket globe published by Mary Senex - the widow of John Senex - who successfully ran the map and globe business from 1744, until her retirement in 1755. One of the very few instances of female run business in the eighteenth century.

Geography
To distinguish this globe from the one Senex produced with Price, he changed the lettering, emphasized the trade winds and erased the track of Francis Drake's voyage. The title sits within a rectangular cartouche in the northern Pacific Ocean. The prime meridian is marked as London but ungraduated. The North and South Poles are labelled as well as the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and their respective landmasses marked "Incognita". The "Pacific Ocean or Great South Sea", the "Western or Atlantic Ocean" and the "Etheopic Ocean" are shown with arrows for trade winds and monsoons. Australia is drawn according to the Dutch discoveries, and appears as "New Holland", although "New Zeland" appears in the place most contemporaries assigned to "Van Diemen's Land". Portions of the western and southern coastline are missing, and all of the eastern coastline. The northern coastline is connected to New Guinea. Africa includes "Negroland", "Zaara Desert", "Coast of the Caffres" and "Zanguebar". Asia lacks a firm northern and north-eastern coastline, and both areas are labelled "Incognita". Japan is incorrectly drawn, with its southern island labelled "Bongo".

The plates were updated again in 1744, revised to show California as a peninsula and George Anson's circumnavigation of the same year. The Kamchatka Peninsula also appears on this globe, reflecting the findings of Vitus Bering's second expedition spanning ten years (1733-1743) exploring northern Russia, mapping the Arctic coast of Siberia and reaching Alaska in North America. Bering died of scurvy during the voyage, and an island off the Kamchatka Peninsula was eventually named in his honour.

George Adams went on to buy the Senex plates in c1756, and the present globe has been incorrectly attributed to him in the past. However, it can be distinguished from the Adams globes as it does not include the hypothetical eastern coast of Australia.

Astronomy
The celestial gores, lining the case, bear no revision from the set Senex published with Charles Price in 1710. The signs of the zodiac are shown along the ecliptic. Both ecliptic poles are marked; as are the Arctic and Antarctic circles, the tropics and the celestial equator. The 48 Ptolemaic constellations are named, and two non-Ptolematic; together with the 12 southern constellations by Plancius - although Dorado is named "Xiphias" - and three by Hevelius.

Biography
John Senex (1678-1740) was apprenticed to the London bookseller Robert Clavell in 1695, branching out on his own in 1702. Between 1703 and 1706 Senex formed an early partnership to produce instruments with Jeremiah Seller and Charles Price, the successors of John Seller. Senex continued in partnership with Price until 1710, and he then joined forces with John Maxwell, by which time he had gained a reputation as a successful publisher of atlases, maps and geographical texts. He produced his first set of 325mm (12 inch) globes in 1706, and then, in 1710, just before his split with Price, a pair of pocket globes. In 1728 Senex was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1738 he presented a paper to the Society with suggestions for making a celestial globe into a precession globe. His globes were held in such high regard that one appears in a portrait by Richard Wilson of George III and his brother Frederick with their tutor: "if we can judge from survival rates and geographical spread, he was the greatest globe-maker of his day" (Worms). Following his death, Senex's publishing interests were continued by his widow, Mary. In 1755 his stock was acquired at auction by James Ferguson. Only one set of plates escaped, the Senex-Price celestial pocket globe and those for a newly engraved matching terrestrial sphere, which went to the celebrated instrument maker George Adams Snr (1704-1772).