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Famous world map by John Speed’s, published in his, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, with the date changed from 1626 to 1651 within the title and the imprint to Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell at lower right. Second edition.
The map is one of the first to show California as an island and one of the earliest published English world maps.
The authorship of the map has always been uncertain and in all probability is not entirely the work of John Speed. Speed was seventy four years of age at the time and in 1626 was quoted on his poor health ‘want of sight, liberty and conference’. It therefore seems unlikely that with increasing blindness and his previous encyclopedic thoroughness in the publication of the Theatre, that he would have actively assisted Humble with this new world atlas.
The map is embellished with cartes a figures, side panels with costumed figures, town plans and views in the upper and lower borders. This style was popularised by Blaeu, Visscher and Hondius and soon adopted by numerous competitors. The stylistic similarity to Speed’s county maps in the Theatre, would have appealed to George Humble to incorporate such a map in the Prospect.
The map is based on William Grent’s rare world map published a year earlier and on Hondius’s world map of 1617. It uses the same four portraits surrounding the spheres of Drake, Cavendish, Van der Noort and Magellan that appeared on Grent’s map. It also incorporates the representations of the four allegorical figures representing Water, Earth, Air and Fire that appear on Hondius’s map.
The map depicts an extended north-west coast of America, an exaggerated easterly bulge to South America and a large southern landmass named Magallanica The Southerne Unknowne Land. The north-west coast of this landmass has the names Beach and Maletur, derived from the accounts of Marco Polo’s travels. Maletur has a note ‘Maletur kingdome is abundant in sundry sortes of spices.’
The coastline of the western side of Cape York visited by Carstensz in 1623 is not shown, the recording of the visit appeared for the first time on Danckert’s world map of 1628.
References; Bayton-Williams p.623, Shirley 317, ill. 214.
John Speed (1563-1612) Speed was born at Cheshire, and went into his father’s tailoring business. While working in London, his knowledge of history led him into learned circles and he came to the attention of Sir Fulke Greville, who subsequently made him an allowance to enable him to devote his whole attention to research. As a reward for his earlier efforts, Queen Elizabeth granted Speed the use of a room in the Custom House. Speed began his Historie of Great Britaine, which was first published in 1611 and is an important record of the British towns depicted on his maps . In 1627 George Humble published the Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, printed by John Dawson. This is the world map from this atlas with Speed’s name in the title, but not attributed to him. His atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine was published in 1610-11, and contained the first series of individual county maps of England and Wales. It also included maps of Ireland and Scotland. In 1627, two years before his death, Speed published Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World which was the first world atlas produced by an Englishman. Like his other publications Speed used the Dutch map engraver Jodocus Hondius to engrave the plates. Speeds maps rightly hold a premier place in the cartography of Britain, with their superb embellishments and fine engraving made at the height of the Golden Age of map making.
$A 4,750
$A 145
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