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C1817
New Holland and Asiatic Islands
Mapmaker:
John Thomson (fl 1804 - 1837)
Rare large scale map of Australia with a completed southern coast made only three years after Flinders map of Australia. First edition of Thompson’s important map of New Holland. Flinders’s was the most important colonial period survey of New Holland and … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
New Holland and Asiatic Islands
Date:
C1817
Mapmaker:
John Thomson (fl 1804 - 1837)
Condition:
In good condition, with centre fold as issued.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Image Size:
610mm
x 495mm
Paper Size:
685mm
x 532mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1817
Description:
Rare large scale map of Australia with a completed southern coast made only three years after Flinders map of Australia.
First edition of Thompson’s important map of New Holland. Flinders’s was the most important colonial period survey of New Holland and the first British chart to depict the southern coastline. Flinders had finished correcting the proofs of the text and charts by the end of May 1814. ‘The book appears to have been completed by the end of June 1814, since he records in his diary that Banks received an early copy on June 1814’ (Wantrup). A Voyage to Terra Australis was formally published 18 July 1814.
No inland information is included on the Australian continent. The map also records the first English sighting of the Australian coast and the first recorded European shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia by the Tryall, an East India Company ship under the command of John Brookes in 1622, that had run aground on the Tryal Rocks (105km off the north-west coast of WA). Brookes’s subsequent untruthful report to the authorities in Batavia, had him place the rocks further west than their true position and in the direct course of VOC ships sailing due north for the Sunda Straits. This new information immediately prompted Gerritz, the VOC mapmaker in Batavia, to add the rocks on Dutch charts where they remained in this incorrect position for a period of almost two hundred years.
References:
Tooley, 125
From Thomson’s, A new general atlas, Edinburgh.
Collections:
National Library of Australia: Bib ID 21556
State Library of NSW: Dixson Map Collection / Call number Cb 82/2
Mapmaker:
John Thomson (fl.1804-1837)
Thomson was a Scottish cartographer, publisher and bookbinder active in Edinburgh during the early part of the 19th century. Thomson is generally one of the leading masters of the Edinburgh school of cartography which flourished from roughly 1800 to 1830. Thomson & his contemporaries (Pinkerton & Cary) redefined European cartography by abandoning typical 18th century decorative elements such as elaborate title cartouches and fantastic beasts in favor of detail and accuracy. Thomson’s principle works include the Thomson’s New General Atlas, published from 1817 to 1821.
