Les Isles Britanniques ou sont le Rme d'Angleterre tire de Sped, celuy d'Ecosse tire de Th. Pont, etc. et celuy d'Irlande tire de Petti. Le tout rectifie par diverses Observations.

1718 Covens and Mortier / De l'Isle Map of the British Isles

Date d'édition : 1718

A propos de cet article

Very good. Minor splitting at fold in margins, with centerfold mend at bottom margin. Old color, refreshed and heightened with gold. Sporadic water staining. Size 18 x 22.5 Inches. A c. 1718 example of Covens and Mortier's issue of De l'Isle's map of the British Isles. Combining terrestrial and maritime information in splendid detail, this example is also distinguished by old color, refreshed, and heightened with gold. A Closer Look Covering England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, De l'Isle's map also takes in portions of northern France, the Low Countries, and the coast of Norway. Scotland, Wales, and the counties of Ireland are outlined in hand-color. Less distinct lines mark out English 'Provinces du nord,' 'Provinces du sud,' and so on, though the 'Provinces de l'est' are noticeably shaded in green. Larger cities are denoted with a red dot, some of which have been painted over with a gold dot. De l'Isle, being a careful and assiduous cartographer, provides explanatory notes for his exclusion of what he (correctly) deemed to be phantom islands off the coast of Ireland, and for his inclusion of the 'Kimmen Line' in the North Sea, which he calls 'a kind of hill at the bottom of the sea' (the boundary of the British and Norwegian Continental Shelves). Other relatively shallow banks in the North Sea and English Channel are noted. Longitude is measured from the Ferro Meridian. Five scales are provided at bottom-right. Aside from the addition of gold, the title cartouche adds flourish to the map, with illustrations of Poseidon, birds, fish, and mermen. Publication History and Census This map was originally produced in Paris by the De l'Isle family c. 1702 (Rumsey 4764.008); as the subtitle indicates, De l'Isle drew on John Speed, Timothy Pont, and William Petty to produce his map. This example was engraved in Amsterdam by Mortier and published by Covens and Mortier, with whom the De l'Isles had a publishing agreement. Though the date of 1725 is written in, this appears to be a later addition and cannot be fully relied upon. De l'Isle's official title here - 'géographe de l'académie royale des sciences' - would seem to indicate a date between 1702 and 1718 but might have been carried over beyond this date on the Covens and Mortier plate. In any event, the map likely dates no later than 1730. From the original De l'Isle map, Covens and Mortier made only minor modifications, removing the name of the engraver (Jean-Baptiste Liébaux) in the title cartouche to add their own, adding the Latin text at top, and reducing (almost entirely removing) a portion of Denmark and the text 'Allemagne' at bottom-right. This issue of the map is surprisingly scarce, only being noted among the holdings of the Library of Congress, while earlier (1702) and later (1745, Buache; 1772, Dezauche) editions are also only held by a small handful of institutions. References: OCLC 67517151. Tooley, R.V., The Mapping of America (London: The Holland Press, 1985), 5-6. Pool. J, 'The Kimmen Line: Seventeenth-Century North Atlantic Navigation and the Continental Shelf' Terrae Incognitae: The Journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries 38:1 (2006), 26-35.

N° de réf. du vendeur BritishIsles-delisle-1718

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Les Isles Britanniques ou sont le Rme d'Angleterre tire de Sped, celuy d'Ecosse tire de Th. Pont, etc. et celuy d'Irlande tire de Petti. Le tout rectifie par diverses Observations.
• Date de parution: 1718
• Reliure: Couverture souple
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • ENGLAND-SCOTLAND-IRELAND