Biographies of Some of the More Famous Cartographers

William Camden (1551-1623) was an English historian and antiquary who devoted himself to the study of the antiquities of Britain, travelling round the country visiting sites.  The results of his work were brought together in the Britannia, first published in 1586 then much reissued and augmented over the following two centuries.  However, one of the few criticisms levelled at the 186 first edition of this work was the absence of maps.

This failing was remedied in the sixth edition of 1607 for which maps were commissioned from William Kip and William Hole.  Drawing on the surveys of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and the Anonymous/William Smith series, they produced a series of 57 maps.  The maps are clearly engraved, often with decorative cartouches displaying ships and sea monsters.  These maps form an attractive and popular series.  A number are the earliest individual maps of some counties that can be obtained - although the maps are predated by those of the Saxton atlas, first published in 1579 and now very rare, Saxton frequently combined counties on one sheet, rather than mapping them separately and Kip and Hole did.

Three editions of the Kip and Hole maps may be found; the first is identifiable by Latin verso text, the second (1610) lacks text while the third (1637) displays an engraved plate number.  Such was the popularity of the Britannia with its history and nature of the English and Welsh counties, that the work was re-published under the editorship of Edmund Gibson in 1695 (and then 1722, c.1730, 1753 and 1772) with maps by Robert Morden.  Richard Gough (1735-1809), the celebrated English collector and onetime Director of the Society of Antiquaries, also edited a 1789 edition of the Britannia  with maps by John Cary.

The frequency with which the Britannia was re-printed and the number of editions, under different editors, with maps by different mapmakers bears testament to the success and popularity of the work.

Pieter van den Keere (1571-1646) was an active Dutch engraver perhaps best known for his collection of pocket-sized maps of the British Isles, assembled in about 1605.  The maps, reprinted by Willem Blaeu in 1617, were subsequently acquired by Speed’s publisher George Humble circa 1620.  Those plates which showed separate counties were re-engraved, with the titles now in English, and plate numbers added. For those counties previously combined on one sheet, he substituted new plates, depicting the counties separately.  The atlas was known as the “miniature-Speed” and was frequently reprinted, from 1627 onwards, to coincide with folio editions of Speed’s maps.  Van den Keere also engraved the plates for the miniature edition of Speed’s "Prospect ...", published in 1646.

Van den Keere - often known as Kaerius - also engraved a large number of foreign maps at miniature, quarto and folio sizes and his plates were, in some cases, re-published well into the eighteenth century.  An interesting signature on the “Argonautica” map in Jansson’s classical atlas reveals that van den Keere engraved the plate at the age of seventy four, in 1645.
 

Thomas Kitchin (1718-1784) was one of the best and most prolific engravers of the eighteenth century.  He issued The General Atlas, Describing the Whole Universe , first published in 1773, and regularly reissued thereafter.  His work also included a large number of maps of the English counties, particularly for the London Magazine (1747-1760), the Universal Magazine (1747-1766), and for Dodsley’s England Illustrated (1764).  Other maps were published in conjunction with Emanuel Bowen in the Large English Atlas and the Royal English Atlas (1763).

 

CAMDEN'S BRITANNIA: William KIP & William HOLE

William Camden (1551-1623) was an English historian and antiquary who devoted himself to the study of the antiquities of Britain, travelling round the country visiting sites. The results of his work were brought together in the "Britannia", first published in 1586 then much reissued and augmented over the following two centuries. However, one of the few criticisms levelled at the 186 first edition of this work was the absence of maps.

This failing was remedied in the sixth edition of 1607 for which maps were commissioned from William Kip and William Hole. Drawing on the surveys of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and the Anonymous/William Smith series, they produced a series of 57 maps. The maps are clearly engraved, often with decorative cartouches displaying ships and sea monsters. These maps form an attractive and popular series. A number are the earliest individual maps of some counties that can be obtained - although the maps are predated by those of the Saxton atlas, first published in 1579 and now very rare, Saxton frequently combined counties on one sheet, rather than mapping them separately and Kip and Hole did.

Three editions of the Kip and Hole maps may be found; the first is identifiable by Latin verso text, the second (1610) lacks text while the third (1637) displays an engraved plate number.

Such was the popularity of the "Britannia" with its history and nature of the English and Welsh counties, that the work was re-published under the editorship of Edmund Gibson in 1695 (and then 1722, c.1730, 1753 and 1772) with maps by Robert Morden. Richard Gough (1735-1809), the celebrated English collector and onetime Director of the Society of Antiquaries, also edited a 1789 edition of the "Britannia" with maps by John Cary.

The frequency with which the "Britannia" was re-printed and the number of editions, under different editors, with maps by different mapmakers bears testament to the success and popularity of the work.