A miner of Drontheim. Danish Laplanders. A Kilop L…

Emanuel Bowen (1693 - 1767)

English engraver, mapmaker and publisher active in London during the first half of the c.18th.

He trained under the engraver Charles Price and established himself in the competitive London print trade at a time when demand for maps and geographical works was expanding rapidly. Bowen was the “Geographer to His Majesty” (George II) and later “Geographer to the Prince of Wales,” appointments that he prominently advertised on his maps. He produced a wide range of cartographic works, including separately issued maps, road maps, county surveys and atlas sheets. Among his best-known publications is Britannia Depicta (first issued in the 1720s), a series of county maps often accompanied by descriptive text and lists of towns, seats and antiquities. He also contributed maps to multi-volume works such as John Owen’s Britannia Depicta editions and other collaborative publications.

Bowen’s cartographic style is characterised by clear engraving, decorative cartouches and detailed textual annotations. Many of his maps include historical notes, population figures, trade information and references to classical or biblical geography, reflecting the eighteenth-century appetite for both practical and learned geographic knowledge. He issued maps of the British Isles, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa, responding to growing public interest in overseas exploration and imperial expansion.

He frequently collaborated with other publishers and engravers, including Thomas Kitchin.

Despite professional activity and royal appointments, Bowen experienced financial difficulties in his later years and is recorded as having died in relative poverty in 1767.

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