Product Description

This work contains maps of England, Ireland, and Scotland from Joan Blaeu's exquisite world atlas of 1665. "The Atlas Maior", the cartographical masterpiece of the Baroque period, was brought out between 1662 and 1665 by the Amsterdam publisher Joan Blaeu, one of Holland's leading cartographers. Originally appearing in Latin, the atlas comprised 594 maps in 11 volumes, which depicted the whole of the world as known to early modern Europe. It was the largest and most expensive book published during the 17th century. For more than 100 years, it remained the definitive atlas of the world, and today is among the most sought-after and valuable antiquarian rarities. This reprinted edition in six volumes is based on the hand-colored, gold-heightened copy in the "Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek" in Vienna, thus ensuring the best possible detail and quality. Alongside Joan Blaeu's original commentaries on the individual maps, a new text by Peter van der Krogt explains the historical and cultural associations and introduces the reader to the fascinating world of early modern cartography. This two-volume set features all 58 maps of England and 55 maps of Scotland and Ireland and the text is in English, French, and German.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64431 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-09
• Original language: English, French, German
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

About the Author
Joan Blaeu (1596 Alkmaar - 1673 Amsterdam) was the son of Willem Blaeu and a leading Dutch cartographer. In 1620 he became a doctor of law and subsequently joined his father's workshop. In 1635 they published the two-volume Novus Atlas (Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive, Atlas novus). Joan and his brother Cornelius took over the workshop after their father had died in 1638. Joan became the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company. Around 1649 he published a collection of Dutch city maps entitled Tooneel der Steeden (Theater of Cities). In 1651 he was voted into the Amsterdam council. In 1654 he published the first atlas of Scotland. In 1662 he reissued the atlas in 11 volumes, known as the Atlas Maior. A cosmology was planned as his next project, but a fire destroyed the workshop in 1672. Joan Blaeu died in the following year. Since 1990, Peter van der Krogt, the leading expert in the field of Dutch atlases, has been working on Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, the cartobibliography of atlases published in the Netherlands. His second project is the compilation, in cooperation with the Nijmegen University, of an illustrated and annotated catalogue of the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, the most important multivolume atlas preserved in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

Customer Reviews

A tiny complaint but still .............. 5 stars
I was amongst those who raved about the one volume larger format edition of this same atlas, the fascimile of an 11 volume atlas encompassing the whole known world as seen by Johan Blaeu in 1665.
As I said of that tome, if you like travel, history and maps this is for you. If you like Michelin and Ordnance Survey but would like to know about Mercator and Speed, this is for you.
That one volume edition monumental though it was, was obviously a taster for the various separate editions of which this is one. If you are a completist you may therefore be a tiny bit annoyed at the folks at Taschen, the publishers. Why fork out for a one volume incomplete edition if you can have all those separate atlases to salivate over?
Looking at this volume though, your annoyance will vanish quickly. Yes, some of the introductory material is identical to that in the one volume edition and will be identical to material in other volumes, but look at that colour, look at those details and consider what a ridiculously low price Taschen is charging for this.
I'll probaly end up buying all those separate volumes one after another!
Thank you Mr. van de Krogt and Thank you Taschen Verlag for giving us so much pleasure.

Not a facsimile
Beware: although the quality of the reproduction is splendid, this is not a facsimile in the ordinary sense of the word. Only about 80% of the maps are reproduced as double-page spreads; the other maps are reproduced occupying half a page each, which renders them illegible. What irritates more is that this is not a means of economising on the number of pages in the book: these half-page maps are complemented by enlargements of parts of a map, very often of just those maps which are reproduced as half-pages. This idiosyncratic approach substantially reduces the value of this work.

Note also (an obvious point) that the pages, although large, are only about two-thirds of the linear dimensions of the original.