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C1855
Map of Central America Shewing the Different Lines…
Mapmaker:
Early issue of James Wyld’s large scale map of central America with extensive information on a proposed canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific. There are four large insets. Wyld, James: A new general atlas of modern geography consisting of a … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
Map of Central America Shewing the Different Lines of Atlantic & Pacific Communication.
Date:
C1855
Mapmaker:
Condition:
Note the condition of this is normally found with it being trimmed close at top and at lower right and with a small cut section which extends beyond the map area has been folded. In good condition, folds as issued. With exceptional strong original hand colouring.
Technique:
Copper engraving with original hand colouring.
Image Size:
810mm
x 580mm
Paper Size:
835mm
x 583mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1855
Description:
Early issue of James Wyld’s large scale map of central America with extensive information on a proposed canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific. There are four large insets.
Wyld, James: A new general atlas of modern geography consisting of a complete collection of maps of the four quarters of the globe delineating their physical features and coloured to show the limits ……
Collections:
National Library Australia: Bib ID 3255502
Royal Collection Trust UK: RCIN 1046864
State Library New South Wales: Call Numbers SC/X2 (1858-1863)
State Library Victoria: MAPEF 912 W97N (1850)
James Hope Wyld (1812 - 1887)
Wyld the younger was born in 1812 and was a highly-regarded British mapmaker known for producing maps with the most recently-acquired information. He was educated at Woolwich, in preparation for joining the army, but at 18 he joined his father, James Wyld the elder, in the map publishing business. Like his father, he was held in high esteem and would come to hold 17 European orders of merit during his life. He showed a flare for business and when his father died in 1836, he became the sole proprietor. In 1839, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and appointed Royal Geographer to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1839, a post his father had held prior to his death. He was famous for his prolific and up-to-date mapmaking, so much so that the satirical newspaper Punch wrote in 1849 that Wyld ‘makes it his business to see further than anyone else’ and that if a new country were to be found in the centre of the earth, Wyld’s skills were such that he would in no time create a ‘Grand Map of that delightful spot, the Centre of the Earth, published for the use of Emigrants’, allowing travel from Sydney to London, not by land but through. This view was no doubt spurred by the construction of ‘Wyld’s Great Globe’, a spherical hall in the shape of a globe some 18 metres in diameter in which visitors could ‘see’ the world from the inside out. The attraction at London’s Leicester Square was second only to the Great Exhibition in visitor numbers. He ran the attraction while concurrently serving as a Whig Member of Parliament for the seat of Bodmin (1847-1852 and 1857-1868). He died in 1887 in Kensington after which his son James John Cooper Wyld, took over the business.
