English engraver and cartographer Thomas Kitchin (1718-1784) began his career as an apprentice to Emanuel Bowen, who later became his father-in-law. By the mid-eighteenth century Kitchin had established his own firm with premises first in Clerkenwell and then in Holborn. Throughout his career, he produced numerous cartographic works including both individual maps and larger atlases, and was made Hydrographer to King George III in 1773.

Among his earliest cartographic output is the present chart showing the Mediterranean Basin, as well as the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara ("Marmora"). At the centre of the Mediterranean is a compass rose, with 32 lines spanning out from it to show the cardinal and intercardinal directions, as well as smaller divisions. Some large rocks and shoals in the ocean have been shown, and the route between Naples and Tunis is marked. On the land are found the names of very many ports, harbours and coastal cities, and islands large and small are identified by name, including those of the Aegean.

There are two notes, the first, in the upper left-hand corner, naming the sources Kitchin had used to produce the chart, and the second, in the lower left-hand corner, explaining how the chart could be used in navigation, particularly in calculating the distance between places. At this point in his career, Kitchin produced a number of European sea-charts; they were all published separately, and the present example offered for two shillings, as stated at the end of the publisher's imprint. Unforunately, Kitchin did not have great success with the charts, becoming far better known for his maps and atlases, and thus very few examples of this chart have survived.

Exceptionally rare: we are able to trace only one institutional example, held by The British Library.