Unto the Ends of the Earth

A tiny riddle solved. I’d been wondering why I only seemed to see (apparently) defective copies of the 1932 Pocket Guide to the Soviet Union, published by Vneshtorgisdat for the official Soviet travel agency Intourist. Four maps are called for, but only two ever seemed to be present, with no signs that anything had been removed. Then I found my answer: only the general regional maps were folded into the main publication. The city plans of Moscow and Leningrad were issued separately, in printed wrappers without price or publication details (other than the basic title of the guide). Unusually thoughtful in some ways, as it made them easy to use, but irritating for the bookseller as nine times out of ten book and maps have become separated over the years. Here they are together:

Intourist was created in 1929 to promote the USSR’s image overseas. Stalin’s Russia wasn’t a closed country by any means, although many western tourists arrived as part of delegations sent by trade unions and other sympathetic groups. A majority, presumably, were predisposed to be impressed, but just to be on the safe side they were closely monitored and they were also encouraged to mix primarily with their Soviet counterparts. Parts of the English-language guide are very worthy, covering economic geography, the Five Year Plan and labour legislation. Some of the sites marked on the map reflect similar preoccupations: 

In this corner of Moscow the principal (marked) attractions are Rubber Factory Number 3 and creche, the Rubber Factory Club and the Institute of Red Professors (which was abolished in 1938; it seems that the 1932 edition was the first and only, though I’ll keep an eye on internal dating evidence in other examples I see in case they were ever revised.)

Among the vignettes in the margins modern factories get equal billing with more conventional attractions such as the planetarium, and Soviet sites such as Lenin’s Mausoleum. The same can be said of the map of Leningrad, although historic pre-revolutionary sites such as the Admiralty and the rostral columns seem to have the upper hand. Such is the nature of the city.  

By contrast, here is a French-language plan of Moscow from roughly the same period (c. 1932), again published in Moscow by Editions Vnechtorgisdat and also (of course) issued with the approval of Intourist: 

This is a much more straightforward art deco tourist map, listing public buildings and monuments, theatres, stations and hotels - there isn’t a factory to be seen. The emphasis here is on the cultural importance of the Soviet capital.

This map was conspicuously absent from the blog post on First World War satirical maps which I wrote over a year ago. “Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark!” is a famous image, but I didn’t have an example in stock back then. I’ve finally found one and I plan to make up for my omission now, but if you are interested in how this map sits alongside others of this genre do read the earlier piece: http://tinyurl.com/72ebeg2 

The map was published by G.W. Bacon in 1914 with a title drawn from the traditional (and subversive) rhyme. We don’t know the artist, but it was designed by Johnson, Riddle & Co, and supplied with a text liberally sprinkled with dog-related puns by Walter Emanuel. As map-dealer Roderick Barron has noted, Emanuel was a regular contributor to Punch but he was specifically known to contemporary readers for his anthropomorphic dog books illustrated by Cecil Aldin, including The Dogs of War (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co, 1906). His association with this piece can hardly be chance.

The belligerent powers at the centre of the map have been given appropriate canine form: a British bulldog, French poodle, German dachshund and - in reference to Austro-Hungary’s volatile ethnic fault line - an Austro-Hungarian mongrel. 

Britain is represented by a Churchillian sailor (Churchill was First Sea Lord and - only partially obscured by the whiskers of this humble Jack Tar - the features do resemble his; it may, however, be entirely coincidental: I may be influenced by the sub-Churchillian jowls of the British bulldog).  

Here’s the very German dachshund, complete with pickelhaube and Kaiser Bill moustache, getting a bloody nose:

It’s not exactly visceral stuff, but look closely and there are other splashes of blood. The Austrian mongrel is being stung on the foreleg by the Serbian hornet, but his tail is already caught under the Russian steamroller, piloted by the Tsar himself and threatening to crush the Central Powers through sheer weight of numbers.

The treatment of Turkey is particularly interesting. The Turk is one of the few human figures on the map (a failure of imagination on the part of the artist, or is the zoomorphic/anthropomorphic divide more pointed?) The Ottoman crescent is raised over Constantinople but the Imperial German tricolour flies from the battery protecting the Dardanelles and the battleships in the Black Sea. The artist acknowledges German military support for their Turkish ally, but the Turk is pulling the strings tied to the battleships and he controls the water gate which closes the Dardanelles to the British ships milling nearby. A foolish German lapdog of indeterminate breed, wearing a token fes, is tied to the Turk’s waist.   

The motif of battleships on strings is repeated by the British sailor on the other side of the map. We are invited to see them as iron dogs of war, straining to be unleashed, but it also gives them an unreal, toylike quality. This is a scrap between dogs and not to be taken too seriously. To quote from Emanuel’s text, as I have in the title of this post: “accidents will happen in the best regulated families”. Like other maps of this nature, it reflects the sentiments prevalent at the outbreak of war.  

UPDATE: March 1 2013. This afternoon I showed this map to a couple who came into the shop (looking for geological maps, initially …) and the first thing they said was “oh look, it’s Churchill”. The identity of the British sailor, top left, isn’t necessarily the most important feature of the map, but after thinking about it and discussing the map with friends I am even less convinced than I was a week ago that the widely accepted view - that it is a representation of Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty - is correct. I can see the popular appeal of presenting him as a humble rating, even adding some whiskers for effect, but the features are those of an older man. This could only be Churchill in 1940, not 1914. My money is on John Bull (who often does have whiskers and is generally presented as ruddy cheeked and in the prime of life).

I’ve just been contemplating one of Willem Blaeu’s more striking cartouches, which adorns the map of the Turkish Empire which he engraved in the 1630’s. It was copied directly by cartographers including Merian, and clearly influenced others such as de Wit. But what message was he attempting to convey? This example, with original hand-colour, was printed in Amsterdam by his sons Cornelis and Joannes in 1640, a couple of years after his death:

Here’s a detail of the cartouche itself:

Most descriptions of the map which I have read make vague references to a depiction of the Ottoman Sultan enthroned between ‘two allegorical figures’ or even ‘servants’. Allegorical they most certainly are (both clad in loosely classical garments), but I suspect they are menacing the Sultan rather than serving him. The motto at the foot of the plinth is a Latin proverb derived from Sallust: ‘small states flourish through unity; the greatest are torn apart by discord’. It would have held particular relevance for a Dutch cartographer as the first part of the phrase was adopted by the Dutch Republic, and it was minted on the coinage Blaeu would have handled on a daily basis. Blaeu may be suggesting that the patchwork of small states visible in the upper left hand corner of the map will eventually triumph over the Ottoman Empire, although in this period, despite occasional military reverses, the Empire remained an expansionist power. In this light the allegorical figures may represent discord and harmony: the fruits of ‘war’ (or possibly internal strife, who is dressed as a typical Renaissance Roman), and a distinctly Amazonian ‘unity’, triumphantly brandishing a scimitar. The Sultan’s pose is regal, but ‘war’s’ inverted torch suggests the end of empire, and ‘unity’s’ scimitar is dangerously close to the Sultan’s ear. 

UPDATE: March 2013

I thought it might be worth contrasting Blaeu’s Turkish Empire cartouche with the one he prepared for his map of Persia:

Same cartographer, same period and covering a neighbouring region, but an entirely different approach. The central figure is generally thought to be Shah Abbas the Great (see, for example, Cyrus Alai in General Maps of Persia, Brill 2010). He is richly attired and flanked by two of his guards - protected, rather than threatened. The decorative elements on most early modern European maps of Persia also accentuate the positive, with images emphasising the wealth, power, scientific knowledge and trading potential of the Persian Empire. Maps of Persia also show a greater density of place-names than any other Asian country mapped in this period. Trade is the key. Persia was the most accessible Islamic country, a possible gateway to the riches of the East, which shared a common enmity with the Ottoman Turks with the European ambassadors, adventurers and merchants who ventured there in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

More examples of maps which have interested me. All happen to be from the same era, but I’m making no further claims for coherence - they just instances where the cover art alone is worth the price of admission. 

The cover for an aeronautical chart of Germany:

I had never realised that the original BP was German-owned. I had long associated the company with Anglo-Persian Oil, but it seems the story doesn’t start there. Nor was I aware of the active role played by the company - which was by now British-owned - in the interwar German market. Fortunately I found a concise summary on Ian Byrne’s excellent ‘Petrol Maps’ website: 

Despite its name, the original company which carried the name BP in Britain was controlled by the German-owned Europäische Petroleum Union, which was the sole vendor of Shell motor spirit in the UK. Expropriated as foreign property during the First World War it was sold in 1917 to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in which the UK Government had bought a major stake. This did not deter Anglo-Persian/BP from entering the German market itself in the early 1920s and towards the end of the decade it progressively took control of the former Oil Exporting organisation from Romania, which sold motor spirit in Germany under the name “OLEX”.

Here’s a link: http://www.ianbyrne.free-online.co.uk/bp-germ.htm The site is highly informative and worth visiting even if you are not a petrol map head.

Here’s a 1936 Deutsche Lufthansa Summer Timetable (with route map), for the English-speaking market:

The aircraft in silhouette is the Ju 52, flanking the Olympic rings. 1936 was the year of the Berlin Olympics and the year that the Ju 52, introduced as a civilian airliner, was tested in action for the first time - serving with the German Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. Used as a bomber (at Guernica, for example) as well as a transport, the Ju 52’s shadow would never again fall quite so benignly. The back cover advertises what remains the world’s only regular, commercial, intercontinental airship service, between Germany and South America. 

‘England’s blame’ was a 1939 supplement to the Illustrierter Beobachter (‘Illustrated Observer’), a propaganda magazine published in Munich by the Nazi party: 

It unfolds to reveal maps of the world and the British Isles. On the cover, a pipe smoking corporal is borne along by enslaved subjects of the Empire. A bit thick, one might say, given some of the schemes then being touted around by the publisher’s compatriots, but unified Germany arrived too late on the scene to develop much in the way of a formal empire, and what she had grabbed had largely been lost in 1919; the evils of empire was a useful stick for Nazi propagandists.  

On an entirely different note, here’s a striking cover for the 1940 edition of Motor Runs from Bombay, published by The Times of India Press in Bombay. These include routes suitable for the monsoon season (if you’ve ever experienced an Indian monsoon you’ll appreciate why that might be handy). 

Stanley Jepson also wrote on big game hunters (“well-known shikaris”) and published a travelogue on the overland route to India. On the basis of the titles alone one might be tempted to dismiss him without reading further. However, he was an enthusiastic film-maker (here is a film he wrote and produced: http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1332) and as editor of the popular Illustrated Weekly of India he seems to have encouraged young photojournalists such as T.S. Satyan and Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman press photographer, who died earlier this year. Note to self to find out more. 

And to close, a distinctly Death on the Nile era map of Cairo by Alexander Nicohosoff, published in Alexandria in the mid 1930s:

In my mind it is poking out of the linen pocket of a tourist on a Nile steamer.

I’m often asked how maps were printed in the hand-press period. And the (short) answer is that that between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth-centuries, the finest results were obtained by taking impressions, one at a time, from etched and/or engraved metal plates, which were usually made of copper. The next question, sometimes, is to ask me if there is anything to stop people using these plates to turn out facsimiles today.

There is plenty one can say about early paper stocks and original hand-colour, but the shortest answer (again) is that very few original copper-plates have come down to us. Copper (then, as now) was a valuable raw material. There were very few incentives not to melt down and re-use plates which were worn or carried out-of-date information. Some copper plates had long lives, but once their commercial usefulness was over, if even ‘antiquarian’ interest was exhausted, they went into the melting pot.

But every now and again there is an exception.

Bohemian artist and etcher Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was probably the greatest exponent of his craft active in mid seventeenth-century England. He arrived in London in 1636, was a Royalist during the Civil Wars and took temporary refuge in Antwerp, but he returned to London in 1650, and following the Restoration he was appointed ‘Scenographer or designer of Prospects to the King’. He died in penury, “owning little more than his bed and a few pots and pans” (Worms/Baynton-Williams Dictionary of Map Engravers, Rare Book Society 2011; NB, if you are a librarian, collector or dealer and don’t have this book by now, shame on you). If you haven’t guessed by now, it is one of Hollar’s plates, his map of Kingston-upon-Hull, engraved c. 1642, which I have just purchased.   

W. Hollar fecit, his signature.

The scholarly importance of the plate lies in the clues it might offer us about Hollar’s working techniques. I suspect that there is much work to be done on that score. But there is also a thrill in handling the skilfully worked metal which Hollar created with his own hands 370 years ago, the very plate which each and every subsequent impression was pulled from, the same plate which sat in the shops of Robert Sayer and Robert Laurie and James Whittle. There is something of the relic hunter in us all, perhaps! But before considering the transmission of the plate in detail, here it is in its entirety:

In the upper part of the plate is a view of the city and its fortifications taken from the Humber; there is an inset map of the general environs, and Hollar’s own signature can be seen bottom centre, below the town plan itself. All delicately etched and, of course, everything is reversed. Working with acid must have been second nature to a seasoned professional like Hollar, and mirror writing something he could do in his sleep, but the workmanship of a plate like this demands enormous respect from a layman like me.   

Very few of Hollar’s original plates are known to have survived. Richard Pennington attempts a census in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar (CUP 1982, p. lii). Hollar produced numerous maps but, leaving this plate of Hull aside, no others are listed - although there are a handful of topographical views. Hollar’s famous prospect of London before and after the Great Fire would be among the most impressive, but although Pennington was aware that it had surfaced in the London trade, its current whereabouts were unknown to him. This then, could be a unique surviving example of a cartographic copperplate in Hollar’s hand.     

The map forms item 984 in Pennington’s Catalogue; in terms of the transmission of the plate, Pennington notes that the map was still being offered in the late eighteenth-century, appearing in printseller Robert Sayer’s catalogue of 1766 and in Laurie & Whittle’s of 1795. Also in the 1790’s an entirely new plate, following Hollar’s map, was engraved by Isaac Taylor (1759-1829 - being the second of the two Isaacs in Worms/Baynton-Williams) which was used to illustrate John Tickell’s The History of the town and country of Kingston-upon-Hull. However, the original copperplate is known to have survived: it still existed in 1933, when it was in the possession of Hull printing firm Richard Johnson & Sons. And, if I’m right, I’m looking at it now.

UPDATE, November 8: Really excellent news. The plate has found a permanent home in the national map collection at the British Library - which is where such a unique and potentially illuminating fragment of British cartographic history really belongs. Pinda and I carried it over this morning, and rare maps curator Tom Harper and colleagues were genuinely thrilled. From now on it will be available for anyone who is researching Hollar (and I can visit it myself) and Tom tells me that after cleaning (I didn’t get out the duraglit …) it may be displayed to the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which houses a permanent display of the treasures of the British Library. The rediscovery of the plate may also be in time for inclusion in Simon Turner’s updated edition of Pennington.  

UPDATE: March 2 2013: thanks to Tom Harper and the professional photographers at the BL, this image of the printing plate, a vast improvement on my own:

Finger marks more in evidence but far less glare …

“They cut his throat from ear to ear, his head they battered in; his name was Mr William Weare, who dwelt at Lyon’s Inn.” This well-enough known fragment of doggerel has been inscribed in an early hand at the back of one of my Chelsea bookfair purchases, an 1824 first edition of George Henry Jones’ Account of the Murder of Mr William Weare:   

It’s a nice book, uncut in its original boards, with 8 pages of publisher’s advertisements at the front - always of interest. The murder itself caused a sensation. It exposed the seamier side of late Georgian England, an underworld of gambling and amateur boxing. Weare was brutally murdered by three fellow gamblers in a dispute over money, and his body was dumped in a nearby pond. John Thurtell, the ringleader, was hanged; one accomplice, William Probert, was pardoned after turning King’s Evidence, but was also hanged a couple of years later after stealing a horse. The third man present, John Hunt, was transported to Australia, where in time he raised a family and became a police constable. What attracted me to the book, though, were the maps:

Dated December 1st 1823, this map of the immediate environs of Probert’s house at Gill’s Hill near Radlett, where the murder took place, is a very early example of a lithographed map by Charles Hullmandel. Hullmandel’s seminal treatise The Art of Drawing on Stone was published in 1824, and he became the foremost lithographer of the period, responsible for the printing of Edward Lear’s glorious parrots (and many of his landscapes) and most of John Gould’s birds.

It reminds of nothing so much as the crime maps in golden age detective novels. I recently treated myself to a re-reading of Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors and was using her map to pick my way around the imagined landscape of Fenchurch St Paul, and the plan of the parish church where much of the action takes place. There are innumerable examples of these fictional maps to pick from, possibly drawing inspiration from a genre of maps illustrating real crimes, such as this one. Hullmandel’s map identifies the place where the murder was committed, the spot where a witness heard the report of a pistol and the pond where the body was found. There is also a plan of Gill’s Hill cottage and grounds, identifying the pond in which the body was first concealed and even the location of the sofa where one of the murderers passed a couple of nights after the event:

And a final note on provenance, as the book had a rather nice contemporary ownership inscription dated February 1824:

Maria Fawkes (1798-1854) of Farnley Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, had recently married General Sir Edward Barnes, a veteran of the Peninsula and Waterloo, who took up his post as Governor of Ceylon in this year. According to one online source it was a whirlwind romance, lasting just three weeks, and the general idolised her. The house still exists, in public ownership. 

UPDATE: 15 November. Thanks to Francis Herbert for drawing my attention to Tony Campbell’s article on Rowland Hill’s 1817 murder map, concerning the murder of Mary Ashford: http://www.maphistory.info/murdermap.html

The Weare murder map, above, seems to have been of general interest - produced for contemporaries who were trying to visualise the scene and, potentially, for those going on a tour of the site (these went on for some years: Walter Scott followed the Weare murder trail in the later 1820s, an incident featured in Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder, HarperPress 2011). However, Tony Campbell suggests that Hill’s map was potentially ‘the first exercise in forensic cartography’. The route taken by the accused man was instrumental in securing his acquittal, on appeal. 

I’ve never seen a map quite like this before. It’s on a small vellum leaf (13.5 x 8.5 cms) which has been pierced with great intricacy to create a lace-like effect; the hand is eighteenth-century and southern European, possibly Spanish. Saint Barbara watches over her island: a fanciful depiction of the coastline forms a cartouche around her name.

As the leaf is now separated from the rest of the book it is difficult to say much more with certainty, but it could well have formed the frontispiece of a little prayer book, perhaps belonging to someone with the given name Barbara, who would have celebrated her name day on the saint’s feast day. It seems a little delicate to have belonged to an artilleryman or engineer - Barbara is the patron saint of anyone who works with explosives - but that is just a guess. It seems unlikely to me that it formed part of a complete isolaria or island book - though it’s a lovely thought. Here’s the map:

Santa Barbara is the smallest and most southerly of the Channel Islands, the archipelago off the Californian coast, just west of Los Angeles. It was named in 1602 by the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino, who reached the island on the saint’s feast day, December 4th. The map bears little relation to the actual coastline of Santa Barbara as we know it today, but that isn’t at all unreasonable. It is a tiny island, and if our eighteenth-century artist had access to a map of the region at all, Santa Barbara is unlikely to have been depicted with any degree of accuracy. I do get a sense that the artist had seen other maps or charts with small islands on them - the style is quite distinctive. And perhaps there was a genuine connection between the family that commissioned the work and the sea. Again, one can only speculate. This is a map which raises more questions than it answers.

In previous posts I’ve mentioned that there was an early flowering of cartoon and satirical maps during the Crimean War, but they rarely turn up and so I was delighted to acquire this example:

“Done by T.O.” which I think we can reveal with some certainty to be Thomas Onwhyn, and published by Rock Brothers and Payne in 1854, this Comic Map of the Seat of War is among the earliest satirical maps of Europe; certainly the earliest I’m aware of. Mind you, all the elements one finds in later maps by Fred Rose and his successors seem to be in place already, including the bad puns. The Caucasus become ‘Cork as us mountains’ with stoppered summits; the up-ended bottle clutched by the Turkish Turkey is labelled ‘the Sublime Port[e]’; Malta is represented by a foaming tankard of ale - ie malt.

Some references are vaguely historical or just plain whimsical, but without particular reference to the Crimean conflict. So, for example, Elba appears as Napoleon’s famous bicorne and Tunis is a banjo-playing lioness in hareem trousers and curly-toed slippers. Don’t ask me why. For the most part the imagery is carefully considered and entirely relevant. Neutral Italy is dismissed as a dog of indeterminate breed wearing a papal crown, and running scared (eyes swivelled behind) because a battered kettle -Sicily, possibly a neat reference to Mount Etna - has been tied to its tail. 

National beasts are much in evidence: the British lion; the imperial eagle of Napoleon III’s Second Empire; a rather dopey Russian bear, wielding a knout knotted with skulls and labelled ‘despotism’, ‘bigotry’, cruelty’, ‘slavery’, ‘ignorance’ and ‘oppression’ and other choice terms. Prussia, on the other hand, becomes a vacillating weathervane, unsure which side to support (if either). Poland is manacled, her very name spelled out in bones.

There is an optimistic early reference to the Baltic campaign. An Anglo-French fleet was dispatched in April 1854, and our map was printed in May. The fleet is helped on its way by Danish bellows, followed by a puff of breath from Stockholm, carrying the words ‘Go it Charley’. The tiny British admiral in the leading vessel, declaring ‘I’ll give him a flea in his ear’, is probably meant to be Charles Napier. It was the largest fleet assembled by the Admiralty since the Napoleonic Wars, and it achieved remarkably little. Public attention at the time - and public memory since - was mostly focussed on what happened in the Crimea.

In May 1854 most of that lay in the future. It was not until the autumn that Russian withdrawal from the Danubian Principalities led the Allies to search for something else to do with the armies which had been transported to the region with such great trouble and expense and blowing of trumpets. However, the Allied Black Sea fleet was already operational, and it is shown here clipping the Russian Bear’s claws around the great Russian naval base at Sevastopol.

The title and scale are worthy of note. The scale is a pair of scales, the ‘balance of power’, with the Russian bear outweighed by the combination of French cockerel, Turkeys, and British lion. The lettering ‘seat of war’ is constructed from soldiers of all the belligerent nations.

None of the scanty auction records or institutional catalogue entries which I have located credit a particular artist. However, the signature “done by T.O.” appears in Asiatic Turkey, in the bottom right hand corner of the map. An entertaining trawl with my friend Angus O’Neill through Bryant & Heneage’s Dictionary of British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Scolar, 1994) and Houfe’s Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Book Illustrators (ACC 1996) turned up Onwhyn as the most likely suspect. Right place, right time, “with an eye for the comic”. Not conclusive in itself, but a reminder of why I keep a proper reference library: googling ‘T.O.’ would get you nowhere. Houfe’s ODNB entry for Onwhyn is the clincher: Onwyhn signed himself T.O. and was associated with “shadowy publishers such as Rock Bros and Payne”. This was supported by a search on Worldcat, which showed that Onwhyn produced work for the firm on either side of 1854, and one can also look at images of other work by the artist; stylistically, it’s spot on.

According to ODNB, Onwyhn was born in Clerkenwell, son of a bookseller and newsagent. He was responsible for a set of illustrations for a pirated edition of Pickwick (of ‘singular vileness’ according to Dickens) and in Houfe’s opinion, Onwhyn’s “most lasting contribution was to the ephemeral end of the book trade in the 1840s and 1850s, illustrating the comic side of everyday life”. There wasn’t a living to be made, and he spent the last twenty to thirty years of his life as a newsagent, taking up his father’s profession.    

So, it seems we have Thomas Onwhyn to thank for inspiring a whole genre of similar maps. His name should be up there with Fred Rose. It is difficult to gauge the popularity or reach of the map, but a Belgian derivative exists, published in Brussels by Louis Mols-Marchal:  http://belgica.kbr.be/fr/test/cp12270Plus_fr.html 

Some of the imagery is repeated in later maps, which may suggest a certain awareness or continuity following on from this particular work. Discussing the relationship between the work of William Mecham and Lillie Tennant in an earlier post I was able to demonstrate that artists in this genre were well aware of both their contemporaries and predecessors: http://timbryars.tumblr.com/post/9290475824/europe-as-a-lady-england-as-george-the-dragon 

If you take a look at Louis Raemakers’ 1915 map you will see that he, like our anonymous mid-nineteenth century Englishman, has shown Gibraltar as a bulldog. And in 1914 Karl Lehmann-Dumont portrayed a Russian bear next to a knout-wielding lout. My post on WW1 satirical maps is here: http://timbryars.tumblr.com/post/14824179535/satirical-maps-of-the-great-war-1914-1915 Unfortunately the reliance on broad stereotypes which made all these maps so appealing to contemporaries makes it difficult for us to assign specific sources with confidence, but there’s no doubting that this Crimean map was the start of something new.  

My first guest on this blog is Angus O’Neill (Omega Bookshop). This is a delightful tale of books and booksellers, and of local interest for me as it all took place a few yards from my shop. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and be sure to click on the link at the end for the denouement, if you haven’t guessed already!  

For five years I was a shopkeeper. This was longer than my enemies (and friends) expected. Even the pleasant surroundings of Cecil Court were powerless to detain me any longer; my accountant also had views on the subject, and I had no hesitation in assigning my lease as soon as two reliable people could be found to take it on. Now I work from home, and from a Dickensian dungeon (although Dickens would have approved of the spacious Peabody flats above it): but, for a few months, delusions of grandeur remained, and I rented an Office.

It was a temporary arrangement, and the landlords were good to me. They were refurbishing the premises, which were just around the corner at 30 Charing Cross Road, a tall building dating (I suppose) from around 1910. It was part of the deal that I would move from floor to floor as the work  progressed: this led to some unusual expedients, such as enormous lengths of telephone extension cable, but I had a capable assistant. The rooms were light and pleasant, and it was not even very expensive (the rent, that is, not the rates). Although the ground floor has long been occupied by a delicatessen to whose charms I seem to be (uniquely) immune, there was something about the spirit of the place which seemed to welcome books and booksellers. Rational in many respects, I have often been receptive to what is now termed ‘psychogeography’, and something about this spot was oddly appealing.

It didn’t last. One of those sudden shortages of London office space resulted in the landlord receiving a substantial offer for the lease on the whole building, and - after a settlement more generous than our agreement strictly called for - I packed my books and left. It had been an agreeable few months, but it was over.

Years later, however, I found a reference to the building - or, rather, a previous building on the site - which seemed to me to be not entirely without interest for the students of local book trade history and, indeed, the byways of Victorian literature. The story is a simple enough one: the shop, before the Charing Cross Road was redeveloped, had once been a bookshop, started by a German immigrant who also engaged in publishing. One of the works produced under his imprint would have looked slight by any standards: a rich customer, with time on his hands, had produced (at his own expense, not that of the bookseller) some 250 copies of his anonymous translation of a number of ‘oriental’ verses found in the library of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. Unsurprisingly, these had not sold well (both author and title were close to unpronounceable) and, within a couple of years, they were relegated to the ‘penny box’ outside what was then no. 16, Castle Street. Even at that price, trade in the pamphlets was not initially brisk: but the poems were enjoyed by a few customers, among them two young Irishmen, a philologist named Whitley Stokes and a translator called John Ormsby. They gave copies to some of their literary friends, and the work gradually acquired a modest succès d’estime: so much so, in fact, that within seven years the bookseller/publisher had put the price of the pamphlet up to an altogether more bullish three shillings and sixpence.

In a more rationally organised parallel universe, all these stories would have ended there. The German immigrant - who had started his business with a capital of only £70, not a substantial sum even at the time - would have retired into obscurity, commemorated perhaps by a handful of lightweight catalogues and forgotten publications; his name would have survived as a footnote to the history of Marx and Engels, for whose Neue Rheinische Zeitung he was, briefly and improbably, the English correspondent, but that is about all. As for the idea that the Persian poetry would ever have a wider appeal… well, what would be the chances of that?

And yet, and yet… Happily, not everything in life turns out as predicted by the level-headed: http://tinyurl.com/7pyyfnp .

Have you ever bought a map for its cover? I’m not immune to vintage marketing, and I’ve bought one or two really dull maps because the cover design was simply irresistible. There are one or two map series with uniform (and uniformly tedious) cover art, but often just as much thought went into the design of the cover as into, say, the design of dustwrappers or paperback cover art. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this topic, but here’s just a taste.

Cover art has a long history. Walker’s New Geographical Game exhibiting a tour through Europe was published in 1810 by William Darton and his son Thomas. The cover shows Europeans - including, of course, an Ottoman Turk - seated on crates and barrels (trade) in front of a strategically placed rock (for the title; a bit of foliage spilling over, all quite wild and romantic) and with ships in the background. The date of engraving is given as September 1809, but the engraver himself remains anonymous. Surveyor Thomas Dix’s map of Bedfordshire, published in 1830 by William Darton (working on his own again), has a fine printed label on the slipcase: an engraved template derived from the royal coat of arms which could be overprinted in red with the name of the correct county. It would do for the whole series.

By the mid nineteenth-century cover designs were more likely to be blocked in gilt directly onto cloth covers, rather than appearing on separately applied paper labels. On the left is an 1856 example of A & C Black’s Road and Railway Travelling Map of England, with steam engine and mail coach (and price) worked into the design. On the right is a locally published map of Cornwall, of similar vintage, engraved by W.W. Rundell of Falmouth and published by W. Wood, Devonport; St Michael’s Mount appears on the cover.

Paper covers/labels seem to have made a come-back later in the century - both of these county maps date from the 1880s. Again, they are standard cover desgns (I can just about envisage someone riding a penny farthing in Bedfordshire, but there’s precious little mountain walking to be had in those parts). 

I rather like these turn of the century maps by G.W. Bacon. No solitary cyclists here. A great way to meet the opposite sex, but beware of danger hills.

This is an 1895 edition of J.F. Bennet’s Map and ABC Guide to the River Thames (I have had 1880’s editions with the same artwork). A sturdy gentleman in striped jersey is gallantly rowing two ladies with parasols. Despite the gender differences, this is real Three Men in a Boat stuff: just the sort of map a Harris or a George might have the forethought to purchase, with details of locks, fishing rights, inns and train fares, as well a general places of interest.

This is an 1898 issue of the District Railway Map of London (1st state of the 6th edition). Not really convenient for commuters, it’s a huge folding map with the new underground railways (completed, under construction and proposed) overprinted on a detailed street plan of the capital. The cover shows places of interest (the Monument, Cleopatra’s Needle etc) but I particularly like the steam engine emerging from a tunnel beneath the legend ‘Time is Money’. One could avoid the congested streets above - a major draw - though straplines like this are conspicuously absent from modern TfL advertising. Early underground locomotives were indeed steam, and I have read early c.20 accounts by people who resented electrification because they missed the smoke and sparks - must have been truly alarming in a confined space.

The Ordnance Survey art is particularly well documented (see John Paddy Brown, Map Cover Art, OS, 1991), and already collected in its own right. These, OS and AA, date to the 1920s and actually show maps in use; all three OS covers are by Ellis Martin:

The map of the Lake District shows Derwentwater from Skiddaw.

On the left are 1930s British railway maps, LNER and LMS, by Frank Newbould and ‘Bell’ respectively, and by way of contrast the map on the right is from 1940s L.A. A bit late for Metropolis, but still very Art Deco, and American Art Deco at that. It makes me start thinking of Raymond Chandler novels rather than P.G. Wodehouse (although, famously, they both went to Dulwich College).

And finally (for now), a cover from British Mandate-era Jersualem, drawn by F.T. Treitel and published by the Commercial Press c. 1942. Possibly one of the most ingenious covers we’ve looked at so far.

This year’s London Map Fair took place at the Royal Geographical Society on June 16th and 17th. If you follow my Tweets and Facebook ramblings (or spotted my name on the www.londonmapfairs.com website) you’ll know that I’m one of fair organisers, along with fellow mapsellers Massimo de Martini and Rainer Voigt. It’s the largest specialist map fair in Europe, and on those two days in June there isn’t another place on earth where one could find so many original antique maps gathered for sale under one roof. The RGS has the ideal roof too, with distinguished explorers from Cook to Burton keeping a watchful eye from the canvasses which line the walls. I normally blog about the antique maps themselves rather than the trade, but now that the dust is starting to settle (and I’m finally catching up on lost sleep) I thought a quick round-up of this year’s fair might be of interest. If you missed it this year, come next time.

Excellent press coverage contributed to a surge in visitor numbers, which were up by an astonishing 38%. The fair has never been so busy, and although average sales were slightly down on last year (hardly surprising), the general public accounted for 39% of the take and softened the effect of cautious buying by the trade.

Calm before the opening. Kevin primed and ready for the first wave …

… which looked something like this. One of the best things about the fair in its current location is that every year I’ve been able to sell someone their first map. It’s the same logic behind having a ground floor shop. Maps are intrinsically interesting - really - but it’s hard to get a sense of what’s really out there through online searches alone, and nothing beats face-to-face conversations with people who know their onions, and know them with a passion. As well as a concentration of maps, the fair is a concentration of expertise: exhibitors and visiting trade, curators and collectors from all corners of the world. An ideal place to dip a toe in the water.      

The fair was again full to capacity with 37 leading international dealers and three other related stands. We were pleased to provide a stand to IMCoS, as always, and for the first time the RGS itself had a presence, and a special map fair membership offer.

The lecture on London’s lost or (more properly) hidden rivers by our guest speaker Stephen Myers was deservedly well attended, as was the usual ‘House’ tour of the RGS itself and the series of informal talks on beginning a map collection by dealer and author Ashley Baynton-Williams, an innovation which we hope to repeat.

In lieu of anything better, here’s a really bad photo of a cross section of the audience, waiting for Stephen’s talk to begin. Stephen is a professional water engineer, and he has used his technical expertise to inform his reading of archaeological and literary source material - including maps - as well as carrying out his own on-site surveys. We heard some remarkable new insights into the original courses of London’s rivers (Tyburn, Fleet etc) and their role in the development of the city. He has identified a completely new, western branch of the Walbrook and, in the archives of the Charterhouse, he located the original pipeline diagram made by the mediaeval Cistercian monks who drained it; their need for fresh water (having built their monastery on a plague pit) had far reaching consequences, including the draining of the marsh north of Moorgate. Buy his book, ‘Walking on Water’; I read it cover-to-cover.

Many exhibitors commented on the number of younger people at the fair, often buying their first map or maps. Articles in the Financial Times, Observer and The Times undoubtedly helped to raise awareness of the fair. We had overseas coverage in periodicals such as the Italian Vanity Fair, a spot on Monocle Radio and coverage in online journals such as Fine Books Magazine, but perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the online activity were the numbers of private individuals, unconnected with the fair, who were sharing plans to visit the fair and details of their purchases on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Heads down, browsing, by Garwood & Voigt’s stand.

The next London Map fair is scheduled to take place on the weekend of 8-9 June 2013. As always there will be thousands of maps, charts, plans, atlases and globes, printed between the fifteenth and the twentieth centuries, covering all regions of the world and priced to suit all pockets, from £10 to £100,000; one still doesn’t have to be among the super-rich to start a collection, which is why there’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ map collector. Come along.

Words can’t express my relief that the rain held off. Here’s a rare early c.19 library globe being loaded up after the fair. You see why I was worried.

ABA President Laurence Worms wrote a glowing account from a vsitor’s perspective on his President on Safari blog:

http://ashrarebooks.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-ducking-stool/

Nate Pedersen wrote for Fine Books Magazine:

http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine_books_blog/2012/06/the-london-map-fair.phtml

Nick Crane for the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b4b0213a-a8a9-11e1-a747-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1wdSGqEMO

We also had a piece by Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy in the Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/gallery/2012/jun/10/antique-maps-fair-royal-geographic?CMP=twt_gu

There was also a piece by Huon Mallalieu in the Times; one would need to subsscribe to read it, but it’s easy to find.

High time for another cartographic cephalopod. This one by Dutch artist Louis Emile Manche (1908-82) arrived in the shop just too late for this year’s London Map Fair, but I’m still pleased to have located an original example.

Compare and contrast with Pat Keely’s Japanese octopus, made to boost morale among the Free Dutch in 1944, which I blogged about last December: http://timbryars.tumblr.com/post/14821537264/the-indies-must-be-free-japan-is-cast-as-an-especially

Lou Manche designed a number of posters for the NSB (Dutch National Socialist party) and his octopus carries a pro-Axis message. In the immediate postwar period Manche found himself interned with other Dutch collaborators in Kamp Vught, the former concentration camp.

A dollar symbol represents America’s financial power, and the tentacles bear the dates of American expansion, formal and informal, from the Mexican-American War onwards. The tentacle linking the US with the Philippines (dated 1898 for the Spanish-American War) has already been severed by a samurai sword, bearing the rising sun on its grip. Japanese aircraft menace the west coast, and indeed the only air raid on US soil (by a single aircraft) took place in September 1942. Submarines, both Japanese and German, were more of a problem. The German U-boat menace to US shipping off the east coast was real and is well-documented.

There are at least two settings of the text. This version casts the US as an imperialist power, accusing it of sheltering behind the Monroe Doctrine (which sought to exlude European powers from expanding/regaining colonies in the Americas) when convenient, but actually obeying the law of the jungle, and planting the US flag wherever ‘the Yankees’ feel like it. That deals with the tentacles. The US is also accused of fighting with dollars, not bullets, and profiting from European wars; the dollar is at the heart of the last paragraph: ‘the gold of the international plutocracy [a phrase used here with anti-semitic connotations], concentrated in Fort Knox, is besieged by the irresistible armies of the young [ie Axis] nations, by the armies of the workers’.     

The poster was approved by the Propaganda Section of the Department for People’s Information and the Arts, located in Den Haag. A Dutch friend tells me that Dutch artists were required to sign a document declaring allegiance to the fascist regime. Many refused, and many were interned for the duration in Kamp Vught; the artists who signed, like Manche, exchanged places with them at the end of the war.

Republicans should look away now (unless a fondness for bunting and street parties outweighs any qualms you may have; if that’s the case, you can still skip to the end of the post, and I’ll throw in a map with republican connotations just for you).

As this is the first Diamond Jubilee in 115 years I can hardly let it pass without making a special royal window. Here are a few of the items I’ll be including.

This is Macdonald Gill’s 1937 map of the Coronation procession of the Queen’s father, George VI. This is from the deluxe edition of the souvenir programme, picked out in gold:

The programme (and Gill’s map) appeared in three forms: a miniature edition; a full-size but basic edition for 1 shilling, and a deluxe edition at 2/6, complete with tassels.

I also have the 1937 Coronation edition of the A1 Atlas, a forerunner of the A-Z, in lovely condition. The AA’s 1953 Coronation Day map contains handy advice for motorists on road closures (most of central London … it’s nothing new) and how to apply for windscreen labels and other permits.

Here is the Daily Telegraph’s souvenir map for the present Queen’s 1947 ‘austerity’ wedding. Drawn by P. Zadwill after N.V. Gray, it’s a pictorial map of London which, stylistically, owes more than a nod to Gill:

Skipping ahead to 1953 and the Coronation itself, here’s the official London Transport map of the processional route:

And this is a striking poster advertising the Coronation Cruise on board the ‘Green Goddess’, the green-liveried Cunard liner RMS Caronia:

Named by the present Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, the Caronia made her maiden transatlantic voyage in 1949. She was a state-of-the-art vessel, fitted out with en suite bathrooms and an open air swimming pool, but the golden age of liner travel (as opposed to cruising) was all but over, thanks to competition from a new generation of long haul jet airliners. After a decade in service the Caronia was refitted as a cruise ship, and within a quarter century of her launch she was broken up for scrap.

Only the most prescient passengers might have guessed at that in 1953. The Coronation Cruise seems to have been aimed at the American market. After a luxurious European cruise (see map …) the ship docked in Southampton where she became a floating hotel for the duration of the Coronation. On the day itself, her 500 passengers were conveyed by specially chartered Pullman train to London, where seats had been reserved for them at the specially built viewing stand at Apsley House. There’s more information here: http://bit.ly/LRFqxn

The language of the map is interesting. The Anglo-American flags make perfect sense in context. The faintly baroque dolphins, flying fish and scallop shell all seem very ‘new Elizabethan’, and the depiction of the Spanish Armada clinches the reference, harking back to the perceived glories of the first Elizabeth’s reign - some swashbuckling fun after all that austerity. Unlike the other maps we’ve looked at here, which were made to inform and entertain pretty much anyone attending these events, this one was aimed at a wealthy few; acknowledging that, I still find it a joyful, optimistic map. 

However, if all this pageantry is too much for you, here is something entirely different, John Speed’s map of Scotland:

When originally engraved c. 1610 the decorative border featured James I and VI and his family; during the interregnum the royals were burnished from the plate, usurped by an entirely plebian ‘Scotch man’ and woman, and ‘Highland man’ and woman, never to be restored (unlike James’s grandson, Charles II …) Perhaps it is more surprising that the royal arms remained undisturbed on the rest of Speed’s county maps. The tradition dates back to Saxton’s series of English county maps in the 1570s, the first national atlas of any country. Elizabeth I contributed towards the engraving of the plates, and the appearance of her arms has none-too-subtle undertones of royal authority and control.   

And here’s the window itself:

The Atlantic was a key theatre in both world wars. The German aims were the same in 1914 and 1939: to sever Britain’s supply lines from North America without bringing a neutral United States into the war. These propaganda maps cover the two campaigns, from a German and British perspective.

In 1914 submarine warfare had been a potential menace for half a century (really - C.S.S. H.L. Hunley, 1864), but was still untried on a large-scale. The new weapon was greatly feared and the notion of civilian merchantmen and liners being sunk without warning by an unseen enemy was widely regarded as barbaric. The Germans had to tread carefully, but British countermeasures (such as Q-Ships) made surfacing, and allowing passengers and crew to take to the boats before sinking their vessel, extremely hazardous. The first foray into unrestricted submarine warfare culminated in the sinking of the Lusitania - a propaganda disaster - and the Germans reverted to cruiser rules. In 1915 their calculations were correct: there simply weren’t enough U-boats to enforce a blockade and starve Britain into submission before the U.S. could enter the war. Campaigns such as this one, encouraging soldiers of the German Third Army to buy war bonds to expand the U-boat fleet, sought to change the balance: 

The poster is by German artist F.W. Kleurs (1878-1956), published in Mainz, and it’s a simple but powerful image. An impenetrable ring of U-boats strangles the British Isles. I like the way that the white cliffs of Dover have been extended around the whole coastline, and the star-shaped fortifications surrounding the British cities makes them look suitably militaristic and menacing. By 1917 the U-boat fleet had more than doubled; Germany was starving, and the German High Command calucated that if they acted quickly they could knock Britain out of the war before U.S. intervention could be decisive, even if America did choose to enter the war. Unrestricted submarine warfare resumed in January 1917. The German gamble failed: as predicted the U-boat campaign was a decisive factor in drawing America into the war, but (eventually) the convoy system provided adequate protection and the supply lines held up. There was no swift knockout blow.     

The German Kriegsmarine of the Second World War wrestled with similar problems a generation later. This 1943 British propaganda poster, The Battle of the Atlantic, by Frederick Donald Blake (1908-97) is a reasonably well known image, but one generally encounters the 1943/44 editions with English text. However, Blake’s posters were part of a series produced for distribution abroad in various languages including French, Dutch, Arabic and - as here - Portuguese, bringing the Allied message to the widest possible audience. 

Like Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s right-wing Estado Novo Portugal remained neutral (although Lisbon was a hotbed of intrigue and espionage). Blake’s message for any wavering Portuguese is pretty forthright, the very antithesis of the first poster we looked at. Britain is, effectively, Orwell’s Airstrip One: nothing but factories, shipyards and gigantic concrete runways. Far from being enclosed by a U-boat ring of steel, waves of Allied aircraft radiate out, and with air supremacy comes protection for the convoys steaming in from North America and those steaming out, the Arctic Convoys bound for the USSR, and convoys bound for the Mediterranean. In the mid Atlantic U-boats are scattered and destroyed: 

And Fortress Europe is under constant attack, with aircraft and parachute mines battering the strategic targets such as railways, docks and submarine pens:

As propaganda, Blake’s 1943 poster isn’t necessarily constrained by reality, but successful propaganda often manipulates a perceived truth, and the Battle of the Atlantic really had turned decisively in the Allies’ favour in the Spring of that year. In March 1943 the U-boat wolf packs came as close as they ever did to cutting Britain’s Atlantic lifeline, and supplies of fuel and other vital resources reached critical levels. The situation was reversed within two months: Allied resources were freed from other theatres, and new long-range aircraft - which could now be fitted with a new sea-scanning radar and airborne depth-charges - closed the mid-Atlantic gap. The wolf packs were harried out of existence, and losses to Allied shipping were negligible in comparison with what had gone before. In May (dubbed ‘Black May’ by the U-boat crews) the Germans lost 34 U-Boats in the Atlantic - an unsustainable one submarine for each Allied ship sunk. One lucky convoy (SC 130) escaped entirely unscathed, while five of the attacking U-boats were destroyed. Dönitz conceded defeat. One-sided as Blake’s vision is, it reflects the changed strategic situation.

The artist, Blake, trained at Camberwell School of Art but had been working as an architectural draughtsman. His stint as a war artist for the Ministry of Information opened new doors for him postwar, as a successful commercial artist and respected painter.

The first of these maps was a recent purchase from my friend Ken Fuller of Marchpane (he specialises in children’s and illustrated books but - like most of us - he has a much broader range of interests which are reflected in his stock). The map by Blake came from Portugal, and presumably it had been there since the 1940s. I’ve yet to see any of the series with Arabic or Persian text, but the Portuguese climate (actual and political) has probably been more conducive to preservation.

UPDATE: Nov 2012. Recently purchased the version with Arabic text:

My thanks to Ali Ansari and colleagues at St Andrews. I wondered if the text varied from the original, or was slanted in an particular direction, but it is apparently a faithful rendition of the English:

“A ceaseless battle is raging in the Atlantic. The Axis U-boats’ intention is too isolate and starve Britain. But as the U-boat offensive mounts so too to Britain’s protective measures. More and more vessels are safeguarding convoys. The U-boat’s Atlantic Bases are being pounded by the Allied Air Forces and the entrances to their harbours are being mined from the air. The factories where they are built are being crippled by bombs. All these measures enabled Mr Churchill to say, when reviewing the U-boat campaign in May 1943: “Our killings of the U-boats … greatly exceeded all previous experience and the last three months, and particularly the last three weeks, have yielded record results”.

A very scarce satirical map, and one which I anticipate will be passing through my hands pretty quickly. However, as temporary custodian I can’t resist sharing it. It’s a delight.

Cartoon or satirical world maps are an unusual form in general, and only one institutional example of this particular map has been located (the Bodleian Library has a copy, part of the John Johnson collection of ephemera). ‘NEW COMICAL ATLAS - WHAT THE ANIMALS OF THE WORLD SAY’ by Kamijo Yomotaro was published in Tokyo in June 1904, a few months into the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. It was the first victory of an Asian power over a European in modern times. Russia suffered a series of humiliating defeats on land and sea (the Admiralty presented a lock of Nelson’s hair to the Japanese navy in recognition of the scale of their victory at Tsushima, likened to Trafalgar). The consequences were far reaching: Russian prestige was severely damaged and Japan entered the ranks of the Great Powers. And yet, many Japanese felt that the terms of the peace treaty were over-cautious, and that they had not been treated as equals. Mistrust of the West grew. That all lies in the future, so let’s see what the animals were saying in 1904.

The Chinese pig, Turkish pheasant, Hungarian hen and Persian quail are all in danger from the claws of the double-headed Russian eagle; that is, until the Japenese Golden Kite swoops to their rescue. The American tiger looks on approvingly. The explanatory text is given in English as well as Japanese (for export?) and the tiger says: “By Jove, that Golden Kite is small, but if he isn’t strong and generous! I have nothing but admiration for him”. The peace treaty was eventually signed in the US, and President Roosevelt’s mediation earned him a Nobel Peace Prize.

The British hawk is also portrayed in a positive light: “I was rather surprised at Our Chum, Golden Kite being so brave and gallant. Get at the Eagle, friend. We station ourselves at Gibraltar and at Suez, so that in spite of his audacity, Mr. Eagle can’t swoop from that direction; we are always behind you in the case of a danger. So give him a good everlasting lesson with full hands.” The French owl is dismayed at Russian weakness, and the German bear resolves to keep quiet.

The lion of British India is a magnificent beast, looking warily towards Russian expansion in central Asia (‘that avaricious Eagle better take care of what he does. If he ever put his claws on the Elephant [Tibet], I will tear him to pieces’), and the Arabian camel is a delightful touch, making excellent use of the geographical space.

Another old friend for your consideration. Mercator’s depiction of the Arctic regions and North Pole (Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio) remains perennially popular with collectors and scholars alike. Perhaps I’m coming too late to the table for fresh analysis of the content, but few maps capture the problems faced by early cartographers quite so well. The basic configuration of the islands was not wholly original, but Mercator was the first to devote a separate copper-plate to a map of the Arctic; he had tough decisions to make when sifting evidence gathered thousands of miles from his home in Duisburg, some of which also reached back across several centuries (to the age of Arthur, if the sources were to be trusted). This is a map by one of the greatest cartographers of his own or any other age (variants of Mercator’s projection are still in use, even by the latest online street mapping services) and yet there’s a rich vein of myths and legend blended - seemingly without prejudice - among genuine discoveries. It’s so very wrong.

First issued in 1595 by Mercator’s son, Rumold, shortly after Mercator’s death; our example was printed from the second state of the plate in 1623, and it was hand-coloured at the time.

In reality there isn’t even a landmass at the Pole. But allowing for the fact that the region was largely unknown (Ross and Parry launched the modern era of Arctic exploration in the second decade of the nineteenth-century, and Peary - probably - reached it for the first time as recently as 1909) how did Mercator ever imagine it looked like this?

At the Pole itself he shows a naturally occurring magnetic (lodestone) mountain, the Rupes nigra or black rock - an ancient idea. Surrounding it is a powerful whirlpool, drawing off water from all the seas of the world and sucking it deep into the earth. The whirlpool is fed by four rivers with formidable currents (note the deltas which ought, I suppose, to be at the mouths of the rivers closest to the whirlpool, if the normal laws of geography are observed) and these rivers divide the surrounding landmass into four islands. Pygmies, four feet tall, are said to inhabit the island closest to Europe - possibly a folk memory of the people the Norse settlers of Greenland called Skraelings, the ancestors of the Inuit. 

Mercator is careful to cite his sources. Unfortunately all are lost to us, their contents known chiefly from Mercator’s own summary in a letter he sent to John Dee (and from later maps, including Mercator’s own). Mercator had read Jacobus Cnoyen’s Itinerarium, a work drawing on the Res gestae Arturi britanni but principally a summary of the Inventio fortunata. The latter text was allegedly composed by an Oxford Friar in the fourteenth-century (probably not Nicholas of King’s Lynn, as Mercator supposed) who compiled a report of his travels in the far north and possibly created a map of his own. The underlying assumption was that King Arthur had sent settlers to the Arctic, and the author of the Inventio fortunata had met their descendants. It was a convenient intellectual justification for Elizabethan and Jacobean seafarers, exploring the region in search of the Northwestern and Northeastern passages to Asia. 

From separate (Italian) sources we have the mythical island of Frisland, confused with Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, but here shown south west of Iceland and wholly imaginary.

There is some excellent map-making going on here. Mercator was aware of the latest discoveries by Martin Frobisher and John Davis. And note the revisions by Hondius affecting the region north of Russia (Hondius owned Mercator’s plates by this time and made a commercial success of the Atlas. Our example is this second, revised state; to compare it with the first, here’s the Princeton copy: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/mercator.htm.) The coastline of Nova Zembla has been amended and, at the centre of the map, part of the lower right-hand island of the four flanking the Pole has been burnished out altogether; a truncated coastline has been tentatively dotted back in, separating off Greenland and allowing space for new discoveries just north of (Hugh) Willoughby’s Land (another fictitious island). And yet, whatever tinkering Hondius carried out, he allowed Mercator’s basic concept to stand and continued to publish the map. He may have found errors in the detail, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary a map based on a series of lost manuscripts (even Cnoyen’s account had vanished by Hondius’ day) continued to appear in the most modern atlases.

This wasn’t just the view from Duisburg/Amsterdam. It might seem highly unlikely to us that King Arthur despatched thousands of his countrymen to the Arctic, and the garbled travel account of a mediaeval Oxford scholar seems a slender thread to trust with one’s life, but for Elizabethan/Jacobean Englishmen these were valuable precedents for their own hazardous voyages of discovery, in search of the supposed Northwestern and Northeastern Passages which are depicted with such certainty on Mercator’s map. The prize was rich enough: a fast route to China and the Indies, free from Spanish or Portuguese competition, and if Englishmen had navigated those waters before then so much the better. To modern eyes Mercator’s blend of historical, and one might even say literary sources, with reports from navigators of his own age (some more reliable than others) seems curious and archaic. We expect nothing short of total accuracy from our own maps. Early modern readers, by contrast, were accustomed to the idea of reading a map on several different levels.  

This post is something of a work in progress, so please check back now and again to see if I’ve been able to expand it. So far I’ve tried to avoid some of the most well-known maps, but in this instance there’s no excuse for not beginning with MacDonald Gill’s playful and eccentric Wonderground map of London. Apologies if you know it already, but it always repays another look:

Gill’s map was commissioned by London Transport in 1913, and was so successful that it was offered for sale to the general public the following year. The map I have here is an example of that issue: The heart of Britain’s Empire here is spread out for your view … You have not time to admire it all? Why not take a map home to pin on your wall! And of course, most purchasers took Gill’s advice and did just that, which is why it has become scarce today …

With this map Gill inspired a whole genre of comic map-making, filling his map with poems, puns and in-jokes (some bad, a few inexplicable). One needs hours to ‘admire it all’ (unscramble might be a better word). Here’s how Gill treated one of my favourite places in London, the zoo:

It’s a much more entertaining way of showing how the Underground Stations relate to surface topography than anything dreamt up previously, but the style is better suited to pleasure than business and I note that most maps of this genre focus on West London rather than the City or the East End. The blend of old and new seems typically Edwardian, summed up in this detail from the upper left corner:

The curvature of the horizon is decidedly medieval (Arts and Crafts, anyway), while the aeroplane and motorized omnibus bring us firmly into the Twentieth Century. The speech bubbles are Gill’s own. 

Gill went on to create further maps for London Transport, including a series of ‘straight’ pocket Underground maps in the 1920s; he also designed the font used on headstones by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and numerous posters for bodies such as the Empire Marketing Board. I suspect that he was more commercially successful than his brother, Eric. A new carto-bibliography of his work is expected soon (following last year’s MacDonald Gill exhibition in Brighton), and in the meantime I refer you to Elisabeth Burdon’s excellent article: http://hq.abaa.org/books/antiquarian/news_fly?code=96

I’d like to devote the rest of this post to other maps which were show clear signs of being influnced by Gill’s work. This map is more blatant than most:

Published by Alexander Gross’s firm, Geographia Ltd in the 1930s, it’s unsigned.

The visual and verbal puns (the long arm of the law reaching out from Scotland Yard, the ink spilled on Fleet Street …) and historical and topographical notes are typical of Gill’s work. But it certainly isn’t. Mind you, it was popular enough for Geographia to issue it in jigsaw form:

This is the standard Geographia London Pictorial Map, published in numerous editions between the 1920s and 1950s:

Not terribly inventive, perhaps, but worth including as the early post-war editions are among the only maps to show the blitzed area in the City of London:

The area left blank on the map had almost reverted to the heathland it had been centuries before, carpeted with rosebay willowherb and ragwort. Some streets could only be identified from temporary wooden signboards. Leaving the map blank seems entirely logical - it’s surprising how few cartographers followed suit.

Here’s Leslie Bullock’s Children’s Map of London, c. 1938:

Bullock worked closely with Edinburgh publisher John Bartholomew and Son over a long period. All royalties for this map were donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital. In the margins are nursery rhyme scenes and the map is flanked by the Biblical giants Gog and Magog, long associated with London.

There are scattered quotations, but the map is not as crowded as Gill’s (I suspect Bullock lacked Gill’s talent for whimsical quippery). However, there are echoes of Gill’s work here - I doubt Bullock’s map would have existed without it. I’m also going to include Kennedy North’s 1923 British Empire Exhibition map:

North’s debt is principally calligraphic - the lettering is clearly inspired by Gill’s 1920s Underground maps - although one might also look at the bold use of colour and details such as the buses, cars and trams. Note North’s impressive attempt to reduce the Underground system to diagramatic form almost a decade before Harry Beck.

I’ve been assuming that Kennedy North is Stanley Kennedy North: artist, illustrator, picture restorer, socialist, folk dancer and general bohemian. Commercial work (e.g. for Shell Oil) seems to be signed simply ‘Kennedy North’, but it seems unlikely that there would be two similarly named artists working at the same time. If I spot a definite link I’ll update this entry. [Update May 2012: two members of the artist’s family have been in touch to confrim that this is indeed SKN; he made other maps - possibly another post to follow.] 

The unusual thing about this reduced, pocket version of Kerry Lee’s poster is the way it’s folded. A customer in my shop pulled out a very similar (modern) map of London only the other day. The ‘uniquefold’ patent is dated 1948, which ties in with the reference to British Railways (nationalised in that year). 

Here is an early 1950s pictorial map by Francis Chichester (aviator, yachtsman and map-maker), again in jigsaw form:

Chichester had initially bought up surplus wartime Air Ministry maps and turned them into jigsaws (possibly among the most joyless age of austerity toys ever, though I’d still like to find one). However, this one of Chichester’s original maps. Significant landmarks are shown pictorially, but there are no puns.  

And finally, The Daily Telegraph Picture Map of London, probably 1950s:

Designed by Vale Studios for Geographia, it is entirely distinct from the Telegraph’s 1947 Royal Wedding map by Zadwill and Gray, which I’ve illustrated here: http://bit.ly/KDQwD5. Here’s a detail:

More to follow as I find them!

I’m not much of a one for Valentine’s Day in the ordinary run of things, but I feel like making a special effort this year. So here are one or two whimsical ‘maps of matrimony’ - a popular nineteenth century genre which seems to have fallen by the wayside. You can make up your own mind as to whether that’s a good thing or not. Here’s a hand-drawn example:

The ragged coastline bears a passing resemblance to south western England and Wales - perhaps the ghost of a geography lesson (copying out maps was quite common in the schoolroom). At the top (north?) of the map we come first to the ‘Quicksands of Censure’ the ‘Isles of Temerity’ and the ‘United States of Agitation’ before passing through the ‘Province of Jewellers & Milliners’ and the ‘Mountains of Delay, inhabited by Lawyers’. Heading south we finally reach the ‘Port of Hymen’ which is located in the ‘Electorate of Bridesmaids’ (is it just me, or is that highly suspicious?) rather than the ‘Region of Rejoicing’. Crossing the Gulf of Matrimony and the River of Congratulation we reach … Petticoat Government.

Here’s a popular postcard on the same lines, c. 1900:

The principal tributaries of the Truelove River, the rivers Edwin and Angelina, have their sources in (respectively) Indifference Hill and Fancy Free Plateau. Once joined, they pass through Evasion Rapids, Sentimental Meadow, Separation Deep, Misery Marsh etc before emerging into Altar Bay and Honeymoon Island. Angrysire sounds best avoided …

If all this is getting a bit sugary for you, here’s French caricaturist Paul Hadol’s take on the state of love and marriage in France in 1869:

In map circles Hadol is probably best remembered for the satirical map of Europe he created on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, but as this map prepared for weekly magazine L’Eclipse shows, it wasn’t the only time he toyed with cartographic imagery. His imaginary island is laid out in the traditional heart-shape, but on closer inspection the inhabitants prove terribly worldy. The island is split into three provinces by the rivers Absinthe, Gold Mine and Reconnaissance, which rather sets the tone. 

‘Tenderness’ is a woman hurling a (full) soup tureen at her husband, and only if one can navigate La Mer Dangereuse, past the suicide rocks, can one hope to reach ‘the unknown country of the Good Woman’ … I do hope someone bought M. Hadol a giant plush teddy bear that year.

Here’s another detail:

Only because I thought it would be more fun to leave you all with Billets doux and Grand Esprit …

For many people January is the season of moderation, and some particularly hardy souls (I’m told) even contemplate abstinence. Certain strands of the British media have coined and attempted to popularise the toe-curlingly awful term ‘Janopause’ to describe this practice, and if that’s not enough to have one reaching for a corkscrew I don’t know what is. Anyway, it seems like the perfect time to cover maps about pubs. Actually, Charles Booth’s map of London at the turn of the Twentieth Century lumps in churches and schools as well, but the truly innovative element of the map is the detailed treatment of the licensed premises, sub divided into five carefully defined categories:

And here’s the map, London 1899-1900:

Booth’s pioneering sociological work Life and Labour of the People in London is justly famous for its colour-coded ‘poverty maps’, illustrating the ‘general condition’ of Londoners on a street by street basis, from the wealthiest members of society (coloured a reassuring yellow) to those categorised by Booth as the ‘vicious, semi-criminal’ poor (coloured black). However, I find this map, tucked into a pocket in the last volume of the third series (‘religious influences’, published in 1902) to be just as interesting. Pubs do appear on earlier maps, mostly as landmarks, but despite the growth of various temperance societies in the mid nineteenth-century I’m not aware of any earlier systematic treatment of the subject on this scale. Here’s a detail of the West End - enough of the pubs, thickly clustered though they are, are still there today:

And, by way of contrast, here are the licensed premises in York in 1902:

Booth wasn’t a temperance man himself. He believed in “self control and good sense” and was critical of the “unreasonableness” of those for whom “the whole trade is an abomination”, which he felt had made it more difficult to deal with the proliferation of licensed premises in a constructive manner: “Some, and I count myself among the number, would make it their first object to improve the character of the places where alcohol is sold. They recognise wide differences for good or evil in the various forms, as well as circumstances, in which alcohol may be taken”. Pretty sound, a century later.

As it happens, I’m rather a fan of Victorian temperance tracts. A Bowl of Cherries is about a working man whose wife and children never had enough to eat because he spent his wages in his local. One day there was a bowl of ripe cherries on the bar, but when he asked if he could take one the landlady slapped his hand away. He never drank again. That night, to the amazement of his family, there was fresh bread and meat on the table. He became sober and reliable and was promoted to foreman, and eventually he was able to buy a little cottage. It’s a lovely story. I’m also fond of Owen’s Hobby, about an annoying old servant (the titular Owen, whose ‘hobby’ is, of course, temperance) who is unable to save his young masters and mistresses from terrible drink-related fates - in one instance driving a carriage over a cliff after drinking off a glass of beer. Owen is generally on hand to shake his venerable head sadly. I’ve often thought I should collect these properly. 

I’ve had a run of luck unearthing cartoon and satirical maps lately, which is why they have dominated the last couple of posts, and I might as well round off the old year with one more. As financial crises (well, one enormous financial crisis really) have dominated the headlines all year this Dutch map seems especially appropriate. Here’s how economic meltdown was handled three centuries ago:

This anonymously engraved map of the ‘famous fool’s head island’ (Afbeeldinge van’t zeer vermaarde Eiland Geks-Kop) was published in Amsterdam in 1720. It’s a Dutch take on the folly of their French neighbours, satirising the Louisiana Bubble. Not that anyone on this side of the Channel had anything to be smug about as the South Sea Bubble burst in the same year.    

There’s a bit more to quantitative easing than ‘printing money’, but the tale of John Law and the Louisiana Bubble is still a cautionary one. Law was a colourful Scottish financier who inveigled his way into the confidence of the Duke of Orleans (then Regent of France), and was permitted to set up the Mississippi Company, which controlled all trade with France’s vast and largely unexplored American possessions - believed to be rich in gold and silver. He established the Royal Bank and issued paper money based on the supposed value of shares in the company. Eventually he was minting French coinage, collecting taxes and controlling the French economy to an extraordinary extent. The value of the shares soared, the French economy boomed, more paper notes were issued and after a period of wild speculation confidence collapsed, ruining investors throughout Europe.

This map is rather different from any of the satirical maps covered in my earlier posts. Instead of working with an existing outline (coastline, political boundaries etc) our engraver has created a wholly imaginary ‘mad-head’ or ‘fool’s-head’ island resembling a human head with ass’s ears and wearing a fool’s cap, set in a sea of shares and inhabited by shareholders (discovered by Mr Law-rens). Cartographic features are given punning names such as the River Bubble, the Island of Despair and the town of ‘Madmandam’. Any resemblance to actual geography (Louisiana, the Mississippi …) is purely coincidental. As such it’s in the tradition of maps of Utopia, matrimony or even gastronomy, which use the power of cartography to express abstract concepts. Here’s a modern take on the idea, a map of the ‘Meaning of Physics’ which my friend Jeremy Wood made with author Mark Vernon: http://www.gpsdrawing.com/maps/meaning_of_physics.html    

Happy New Year everyone …

Update 21/02/12: Frank Jacobs has just covered this map in his entertaining and deservedly popular ‘Strange Maps’ blog (http://bigthink.com/ideas/42562?page=all) and a). he says very nice things about me and b). he emphasises - quite correctly - that the satire is general, despite the specific invocation of John Law in the title. The four rivers flowing from the island are the Seine, Thames, Meuse and ‘Bubbel’, representing France, England and the Netherlands … and folly in general.  

I don’t want to repeat too much I’ve just said in my previous post (and probably a good idea to read that first), but I thought it might be fun to compare the different depictions of the British Isles. One tends to encounter the plucky bulldog of Walter Emanuel’s “Hark! hark! the dogs do bark!” or the ruddy John Bull of Amschewitz’s “European Revue. Kill that Eagle!”, but these depictions range from mildly pro to downright hostile. Given the current state of the EU, satirists take note! That aside, I found it interesting to compare and contrast how the different artists had made use of the same geographical space.

Louis Raemaekers, 1914. Britain as clean-cut, claymore wielding Scotsman, with Ireland as his shield (a clever use of the cartography which could also be interpreted as making Ireland the first line of defence).

Walter Trier, 1914. A Scotsman again, but from another, hostile perspective … concealing the Grand Fleet under his kilt.

Karl Lehmann-Dumont, 1914. I described this one pretty fully in the previous post - apologies for the repetition: Bees issuing from the German hive are accompanied by zeppelins, one of which is jabbing Britain (this time an Englishman in a pillbox hat) in the guts, while a mailed fist emerging from the North Sea, smashing a devastating blow into his face, presumably represents the Imperial Navy’s High Seas Fleet. Ireland and India are both presented as liabilities: Ireland, a bottle in one hand, attempts to cut the chain which ties him to England with scissors held in the other, while an Indian snake is constricting the bulldog (all rather wishful thinking on the cartoonist’s part - the contribution of both nations to the Allied war effort was enormous, but this is propaganda … ) Note the sacks of money which the figure of the Englishman is standing on, supporting his weight. That’s a very old complaint indeed, going back to the Napoleonic Wars at least, that Britain could afford to bankroll others to fight her wars for her, stirring up trouble without risking British lives by intervening on the continent in a major way herself.  

Karl Lehmann-Dumont 2, also 1914. On this second map tensions between Ireland and England are not apparent. Ireland has become the bulldog featured in the map above, and England a crocodile, it’s jaws restricted by a band labelled India. 

E. Zimmermann, 1914. England is being shot in the backside, attempting to drag in a reluctant Ireland with a claw-like left hand, while holding a bulldog like a lap-dog under his right arm. Fleet/money are safely stowed where they shouldn’t come to harm. The snake is a reference to British propaganda - claims of ‘false victories’. 

Fritz Elsner, 1914. A rather weedy, unthreatening Englishman in a pillbox cap.

Anonymous, c. 1914. Pretty ropey cartographically, even by the standards of these maps, but it makes the point! A German battleship threatens London and peppers the behinds of the scrawny, cowering British bulldogs while Ireland looks on in pleased amusement. 

Vladislav Levinsky, 1915. As I wrote in my previous post, not the most flattering depiction of Britannia by an ally, but she looks capable! A reference to Britain’s naval might, with Erin keeping close company in an altogether simpler vessel.

In one of my first posts I covered cartoon and satirical maps in a very general way (here: http://bit.ly/oiUomN). They have a long history, reaching back to the mediaeval period if not beyond, but they gained a new currency in the mid nineteenth-century, with fine examples associated with the Crimean War and the Great Eastern Crisis. As an illustration, here’s an unusual German map from that era, relating to the Second Schleswig War of 1864:

“Jütland under der Herzogthümer richtige Gestalt 1864” is a hand-tinted wood engraving by one S. Israel, published in Hamburg by the Spiro brothers. The ‘correct shape’ of Jutland and the Duchy of Schleswig Holstein is depicted as a Bismarckian Prussian soldier. It was probably separately issued: the text at the top asserts copyright, and although Worldcat throws up a number of other publications by the Spiro firm which are journalistic in tone, there’s nothing which seems likely as a source from which it might have been extracted. The war was a key event on the road to German unification: Schleswig and Holstein were ceded to Prussia and Austria (it was to be the last successful conflict for the Austro-Hungarian Empire). 

This kind of map reached its fullest expression during the extraordinary outpouring of patriotic jubilation which greeted the outbreak of World War One - in all the belligerent nations. And it really does seem to have been limited to the beginning of the war, hence the 1914-15 dates in the title of this post. I haven’t spotted anything dated later than 1915, and imagery on the maps themselves, for instance an Uhlan riding down Russian bears, belong to the general euphoria prevalent at the outset of the conflict:

There are no cheeky satirical swipes at the horrors of the Somme, Gallipoli or Kut and one suspects that by 1916 the joke had worn thin. The political situation also reflects the early stages of the war. Most of the maps concentrate on Europe, but the cartoonists often went to great lengths to show how the rest of the world had become embroiled: Indian soldiers wading across the ocean to Britain’s aid, or Japan being reeled in on a fishing line. However, I’ve yet to see one from 1917-1918 which brings in the USA.

This won’t be a comprehensive account of all known Great War satirical maps. I’m going to keep with my usual policy of writing about maps which I have in stock and which I can refer to directly. These maps are no longer easy to come by and in the last few years they have become increasingly sought after, but I have a remarkably good selection at the moment: enough for an overall survey.

Me, with some of the maps, in the shop.

I’ve been asked what the purpose of these maps was, and the answer is straightforward enough: propaganda. Perhaps ‘morale boosting’ would be a kinder phrase. The language of the maps draws upon national symbols and stereotypes that were readily comprehensible both then and now: British bulldogs, Gallic cockerels, Russian bears … but they can be amazingly intricate, and often throw up a few surprises as well.

They were generally sold sold separately. A price appears on the original printed wrappers for Louis Raemakers’ map, and Walter Trier’s map - which I’ll come onto in a bit - was sold in aid of the Red Cross, priced 30 Pfennigs in the margin.

That brings me to another point: many of the artists were quite well known. Louis Raemaekers was a Dutch cartoonist and therefore, technically, a neutral. He crossed into Belgium in the wake of the German advance and what he saw drove him the create anti-German cartoons of such startling ferocity that the German government pressed the Dutch to put him on trial for compromising Dutch neutrality. He was acquitted but crossed over to London to continue his work. If one has any doubt about how significant this sort of propaganda was thought to be, it’s worth bearing in mind that the German government put a price of 12000 Guilders on Raemaekers head, dead or alive. Here’s his map:

Published in Amsterdam by Senefelder in 1915 the title ‘Het Gekkenhuis (Oud Liedje, Nieuwe Wijs)’ translates roughly as ‘The Lunatic Asylum (Old Song, New Tune)’. That seems fairly appropriate for a neutral observer in a world gone mad. In fact, although neutral Holland is looking on and peacefully pulling on a pipe, he has a revolver handy; unlike Spain and Portugal, which are intent on their own affairs, Holland is watchful, peering over his shoulder at his belligerent neighbour. (Compare it with some of the other takes on Dutch neutrality later on: Lehmann-Dumont shows Holland both as a harmless kitten and as a woman jostled by her neighbours, spilling the coffee she was trying to drink in peace.)

Raemakers’ figures fill the space, pushing and straining their national boundaries - unlike some of the maps we’ll come to later - but one significant fact is that they are all human. The mixture of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic characters on maps tends be be very deliberate: one’s enemies are less than human. There are no real grotesques on this map, although Raemakers makes his sympathies plain enough. The grinning, claymore-wielding Highlander representing the British Isles comes off pretty well against the pop-eyed German. Raemakers also predicts the end of empires: after some prevarication Italy had joined the war on the Allied side in 1915, and Russia and Italy together are pulling the Austro-Hungarians every which way. The depiction of Turkey is especially well thought through:

The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers and received munitions and advisors from Germany. Raemaekers’ Turk is cutting his own throat, along the line of the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara, to Constantinople itself, using a sword stamped ‘made in Germany’. As the Italians are shown as active participants (i.e. the map post-dates the end of May 1915) this well crafted use of an existing geographical feature could also be read as a reference to the early stages of the Gallipoli campaign (from April), when Allied success still seemed to be on the cards.

This Karte von Europa im Jahre 1914 is a relatively early work by Walter Trier, a young man in his mid twenties at the time. Unlike Raemaekers, whose career was defined by the Great War, Trier was just starting out. My first encounter with his work (not that I gave it much thought at the time, although it made a lasting impression) were the illustrations in Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives, and his illustrations for children are probably his most lasting legacy. Nobody reads Lilliput any more - though if the magazine is remembered at all, surely it’s for Trier’s covers. But I found it useful to look again at his 1914 caricature map in the context of his later work, especially the anti-Nazi material the exiled Trier turned out in Britain during the Second World War.

This is Trier’s September 1940 cover for Lilliput, featuring his signature man/woman/dog combo; an altogether cuter version of Low’s “Very well, alone”.

In fact, just over thirty years after his caricature map was published he became a British citizen. Trier was born to a German speaking Jewish family in Prague and by 1910 he’d gravitated, naturally enough, to Berlin, but he fled Berlin for London in 1936. His Second World War political cartoons (unlike the Lilliput cover, above) are angry, sometimes visceral, always well-crafted. His Two Weeds: the Creeping Quisling and the Common Heydrich is reproduced here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTtrier.htm

Back to the old Berlin of 1914, and Trier seems to have had a particular problem with the Montenegrans, which he depicted as lice, but otherwise everyone on this map is human again. Not that the Allies are shown in an especially flattering light. The French are retreating, dispatched with nothing more than a swift kick, and special bile is reserved for the British, represented by a Scotsman once more (as per Raemakers) but this time buck-toothed and beetle-browed, protecting the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet under the skirts of his kilt (a mocking reference to the caution with which it was deployed - and one can only assume that this image wasn’t held against him by British immigration officials in 1936). The attempts of the Russian giant to swallow Europe are checked by far more heroic German and Austrian figures. However, it’s interesting to note one or two discrepancies between the text and the image. The redacted text refers to the loyalty of Italy, which was initially expected to join the Central Powers as she was a partner in the defensive Triple Alliance. As it turned out, she initially chose to remain neutral, so the text/redaction makes perfect sense if the map was rushed to press soon after the declaration of hostilities. Similarly Romania, also blacked out, remained neutral until she too joined the Allies. However, neither are shown in especially flattering ways on the map. Italy in particular, with his huge hooter thrust towards Austria, has his hands in his pockets - a decidedly neutral stance. Perhaps Trier knew something his publisher didn’t …

The pair of maps by Karl Lehmann-Dumont, both published in Dresden in 1914 by Leutert and Schneidewind, are among my favourites for sheer wit and inventiveness.

Both entitled “Humoristische Karte von Europa im Jahre 1914”, the first is mostly anthropomorphic (but with notable exceptions) the second predominantly zoomorphic, with the Germans and Austrians cast as heroic (human) tamers of ravening beasts, armed only with whips and pistols, as if in a circus ring (1914 style …)

There’s so much going on here that it’s difficult to know where to begin. The text at the foot of the map is pretty comprehensive, which helps. Evidently even contemporary readers needed some exposition to get the full effect! The bees issuing from the German hive apparently represent the scions of the nobility (I would have guessed industry, but that’s my 21st century mind at work; this is the German equivalent of the lost generation). Spreading out across the continent they are stinging the crazed, boss-eyed Russian bear into submission. They are accompanied by zeppelins, one of which is jabbing Britain (this time an Englishman in a pillbox hat) in the guts, while a mailed fist emerging from the North Sea, smashing a devastating blow into his face, presumably represents the Imperial Navy’s High Seas Fleet. Ireland and India are both presented as liabilities: Ireland attempting to sever the cord which ties him while an Indian snake is constricting the bulldog (all rather wishful thinking on the cartoonist’s part - the contribution of both nations to the Allied war effort was enormous, but this is propaganda … ) Note the sacks of money which the figure of the Englishman is standing on, supporting his weight. That’s a very old complaint indeed, going back to the Napoleonic Wars at least, that Britain could afford to bankroll others to fight her wars for her, stirring up trouble without risking British lives by intervening on the continent in a major way herself.  

The treatment of the Ottoman Empire is again a highspot of the map. The Turk is shown reclining, his arm in a sling, lightly wounded by the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, but bearing a lit candle, which is impaled on the tip of a scimitar in his other hand and threatens to explode the powder keg under the loutish, drunken Russian. The outline of the Crimean peninsular becomes a puff of smoke. A stroke of genius.  

In the second map all of these figures have become predatory beasts: ravening Russian wolves, a ferocious Russian Rhino (which must surely be a first) and a British crocodile (connotations of deceit?) with an inset of a fine oriental dragon and monkeys representing the Japanese.

This black and white map by E. Zimmermann, published in Hamburg by W. Nölting in 1914, is almost equally elaborate.

Quite graphic too: the Russian is being shot in the balls while defecating into a chamber pot (the value of his supposed victories …)

The British and French snakes are an interesting touch - a direct reference to enemy propaganda, specifically lies about false victories. (Actually there’s a suggestion that British ‘black propaganda’, the other side of that particular coin, was so successful in the First World War that it contributed directly to starting the Second, nurturing many of the betrayal myths which proved so damaging.) I don’t particularly understand why the Russian bear is spraying insect repellent, there may be one or two in-jokes, now lost. The inclusion of a French colonial soldier is rather pointed: the deployment of African soldiers on the Western Front was contentious and one senses here that the Germans perceived it as underhand - or at least are presenting it as such.        

 Just a couple more maps. Printed in 1914 by the Verlagsgesellschaft Union in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, the colour printing of this map is a delight, very bold:

Instead of filling the available space the creatures on the map strut or skulk across it. It’s surprisingly effective, putting me in mind of the men and beasts which populate golden age maps. The anthropomorphic/zoomorphic divide is rigid; indeed the whole map is couched in terms of a hunt, a European hunt or ‘Europäische Treibjagd’ to be exact. The Central Powers and their friends (or at least neutral parties - though note Ireland gazing gleefully at England’s discomfiture) are human, the neutrals mostly peering at the action through spyglasses; their enemies are ignoble animals. Our anonymous artist has been scratching his head, wondering how best to bring in Japan, the usual problem, and he’s opted for a monkey dropped onto the periphery of the map. Geographically closer to the mark perhaps, or heading in the right direction anyway, but not as ingenious as Lehmann-Dumont’s boat/hook and line inset. The text simply indicates that the European menagerie has plotted to rise up against its noble master, but that it will soon be tame again. I note that the Belgian lion of the text has been substituted for a Belgian hare by the artist, a curious discrepancy.  

In Fritz Elsner’s map of 1914, published in Cologne by F. Klotz and G. Cremer, the characters also have room to breathe:

Only the skirts of blind-justice-Spain and the Scandinavian lion really fill the available space within their borders. This is clearly deliberate, and I’m wondering if the artist had in mind certain maps of the period which illustrate the relative size of the armies through appropriately proportioned uniformed figures standing next to one another. That would account for the solidity of the French, the skinniness of the British and the bulk of the Russian giant. Unperturbed, the Germans and Austrians are striking out at their adversaries on both fronts.  

This is the sort of table which might have inspired Elsner’s approach; this example is a detail extracted from the Daily Mail’s War Map of 1914.

Finally, here’s a highly unusual Polish map with cyrillic text, effectively giving the Russian take on things:

This ‘Symbolic map of Europe’ was published in Warsaw by Vladislav Levinsky, passed by censor on 9 April 1915 and (naturally enough, having been passed by censor…) it tows the official line. Many caricature maps show Poland struggling to be free, but Poland had been partitioned for more than a century when this map was made, and Warsaw was then the third largest city in the Russian Empire. The map is dominated by the serene figure of the Tsar, pinking the raging German bull without physical exertion of any kind. It’s quite unlike anything on the other maps we’ve looked at so far. The Tsar himself is the personification of Russia, and the Tsar himself will bring victory.

A version of the map was also published in Paris (by ‘Editions G-D’ as ‘Carte Symbolique de l’Europe … Guerre Liberatrice de 1914-1915’. The signature is the same, but dated 1914; the French edition may indeed have primacy, as our map is decribed as 2nd edition, top right) and this French connection may explain the contrast between a glamorous Marianne riding a fine specimen of a cockerel and the rather dowdy battle-axe in battleship grey which represents Britannia. I like Ireland, keeping company in some sort of fishing smack! The cartoonist is fairly kind to the countries on the periphery of the map. Russia’s neutral neighbours, Sweden and Norway, are portrayed as two beautiful women in a close embrace (enduring stereotypes again?) but in another break from the maps we’ve seen so far the Austro-Hungarian Empire is not represented by anything living at all, man or beast. Instead, a fallen crown lies on a barren plain, spotted with graves, bringing us full circle to the predictions of Louis Raemaekers and the fall of empires.

Not a map …

The reception of all these caricature maps is difficult to gauge, but there are clues. I recently discovered this British postcard by Gus Carswell, dated 1915: “This is not a distorted map of Europe … it’s just a ragtime kit inspection”.  The idea of ‘distorted’ caricature maps had become embedded in the public consciousness to the extent that they could be caricatured in turn. If one draws a loose line around the figures one can create a rough approximation of mainlaind Europe (the soldier with the kit bag as the Iberian peninsular; the tip of the toothbrush representing Denmark; the officer in the foreground as Italy, with the dog as Sicily …) Not as accomplished as the other pieces we’ve looked at, but interesting evidence that the currency of caricature maps was widespread. 

UPDATE: FEB 2013. They don’t come along every day, but I’ve bought an example of the 1914 Bacon/Johnson, Riddle & Co  caricature map “Hark! Hark! The Dogs do Bark!” and I’ve discussed it here: http://tinyurl.com/ahujdcm

In this context “Indie Moet Vrij” means that the Dutch East Indies should be Dutch again. Pat Keely’s poster, printed in London c. 1944, was presumably aimed at those Free Dutch troops still in England and, as the war progressed, the population of the partially liberated Netherlands. The end of the war in the Dutch East Indies was particularly messy; like the Netherlands itself, it was largely bypassed by Allied forces, which in this case were driving towards the Japanese homeland. During the Japanese occupation millions died from starvation or through forced labour, but the confused months after VJ Day saw the continued internment of European nationals and fighting between Indonesian nationalists and Japanese soldiers still under arms (here, as elsewhere in the region, the Allies made widespread use of Japanese Surrendered Personnel; JSPs - PoWs by another name - were employed on reconstruction projects and, with even more dubious legality, participated in direct military action. The transition from war to peace created some strange bedfellows). Dutch authority was eventually restored, but within five years had been superseded by freedom of a kind not envisaged by the makers of this poster: in 1949 Indonesia was recognised as an independent nation.    

Pat Keely’s octopus is squarely in the tradition of cartographic cephalopods established by Fred Rose in the 1870s. Rose’s octopus is squat, almost slug-like, with sunken eyes and fat but powerful tentacles. Keely’s octopus is lithe, with pinprick demoniacal eyes, the slender tips of its tentacles curling with whiplike precision around the principal islands of the archipelago. The principle remains the same: one’s enemy is less than human. Keely wasn’t the only artist to have brought Rose’s concept into the mid twentieth century. A Vichy French poster featured in the British Library’s Magnificent Maps exhibition last year cast Churchill in the role.

Patrick Cokayne Keely (?-1970) was a well known poster artist, who designed posters for London Transport and the GPO among other clients. His posters were characterised by simplicity of design and strong use of colour, highly effective in conveying a simple message, as here. To see a couple of other examples of his work click here: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/postofficeposters-nightmail.shtml Nightmail is immensely atmospheric and another smart use of cartography. The track becomes the spine of the country, with signal lamps picking out the principal cities on the route north. 

Just by way of contrast, here’s Rose’s original octopus:

I have to confess that this is not a photograph of an original example from the 1870s. I normally like to show original material which I have with me in the shop, but I simply don’t have one of these at the moment. But it is an original hand-printed lithograph. This is one of a number which the excellent Colin and Megan of Artichoke printers made for me, using traditional techniques, after we had worked together on the Tern Television series ‘The Beauty of Maps’ for BBC 4. I still have one or two, and I think they have some too: http://www.artichokeprintmaking.com/?octopus-map-88 The originals have become so expensive, and so difficult to locate, that I can recommend this as a way of enjoying the map. And it is a proper lithograph, not a laser copy!

My favourite time of year, and here’s a fine map-related greetings card for you all:

It’s in postcard form, probably taken in a French studio early in the First World War (and although the props were probably lying around there for a while, note that the model’s 1907 pattern bayonet still has a curved quillon …) I think that’s a rose he’s holding, while sitting on a crate and looking thoughtful, rather than a handkerchief. It’s not clear, even in the original, but that makes more sense. Ordinarily on this kind of early twentieth century postcard (think Bamforth) the thought cloud above the subject’s head is devoted to sweethearts/wives/mothers, but this chap has the good sense to be thinking about maps at Christmas. Specifically maps of England and France, signifying how much he’d rather be in Blighty.

And here’s a map in the shadows, sent from the Balkans c. 1917:

As it’s from the Survey Company, Royal Engineers, it would be missing something without a map, and a suggestion of one has been cleverly worked into the shadows in the foreground - Italy, Greece, the Balkan theatre of operations generally. The artist was the highly accomplished animal painter and cartoonist George Denholm Armour who happened to be on the spot: he commanded the army’s remount depot at Salonika, 1917-19.

A superbly imaginative use of holly here:

Hughes and Company seems to have been primarily involved in metallurgy, especially magnesium and its alloys, which are strong and light (therefore of interest to the Air Ministry, for example). This 1940 British card is austerely printed in black and white, zincographed or printed from a metal plate of some kind; considerable trouble was taken over its production. I liked it so much that I copied it and turned it into bunting:

You can just make it out, strung across the window. The Dickensian carol singers were from Opera Holland Park, and they were here last Thursday evening. Everyone had a whale of a time, and money was raised for the Chelsea Pensioners. To be repeated next year, we hope.

The National Book Tokens scheme goes back to 1932. I imagine that this is their busiest time of year, and I was always happy to be given book tokens myself when I was a kid: I always wanted more books, and I had a pretty good idea which books I wanted. I didn’t realise that someone got in on the action 140 years earlier, but no surprises when that person turned out to be James Lackington. Here’s the battered Georgian book token I found the other day:

On the reverse is Fame, blowing a trumpet and proclaiming that the cheapest books in the world could be found at  the ‘Temple of the Muses’, Lackington’s great emporium in London’s Finsbury Square: “the cheapest booksellers in the world”. On the obverse is a portrait of Lackington himself.

He was doesn’t seem to have been unduly shy about coming forward. After the manner of royalty, a flag flew from the dome above his bookshop when he was in residence. I should try it! Or at least suggest it to the ABA President … Lackington was also the author of a couple of fairly unreliable volumes of memoirs, which unfortunately have more to say about the great benefits of Methodism/his own moral progression than they do about the mechanics of the eighteenth-century book-trade (which in fairness is probably more of a let down for modern book-trade historians than it was for contemporary readers).

Actually, Lackington had plenty of reasons to blow his own trumpet. He came from nowhere, with nothing, and established a hugely successful business. His refusal to give credit (to anyone) meant that he really could sell books very cheaply, and he pioneered the remainder trade (buying up publishers’ overstock and selling it for a fraction of the original price). 

I had a vague idea (possibly fron a junior school project) that bronze tokens like these were minted as a way of ripping off impoverished workers in the early years of the industrial revolution - the local mill owner would pay his workforce in his own currency, which they could only spend in shops he owned. As usual, it’s not that simple. There was a huge shortage of low denomination coinage in the late eighteenth-century, and private firms stepped into the breach. Of course Lackington’s token could have been redeemed at the Temple of the Muses, but they would also have been accepted elsewhere, at the shopkeeper’s discretion. I’m now wondering if Lackington was the first bookseller to immortalise himself in bronze - we shall see! 

Update, May 2012. Of course, once one starts looking … here are better examples of both the Lackington token designs, 1795 and 1794.

The 1794 full frontal portrait on the obverse was swiftly replaced by something more conventional in profile, but the reverse remained unchanged:

When I showed the tokens to Laurence Worms his immediate response was ‘oh yes, I’ve got a book about that’ followed (with his customary generosity) by an offer to lend it to me. Here it is, a handsomely printed volume published in the States in the ’80s:

Lackington was the most prolific issuer of tokens. Some 7 tons (over 700,000) were struck, but only in the year 1794-95, when Lackington moved into his new premises, The Temple of the Muses in Finsbury Square.

At last, a chance for some intensive cataloguing. Long overdue, and it stirs the blood more than somewhat when the provenance is as much fun as this. Here’s my brief description:

Wolff, Joseph: Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly […] London: Published for the Author by John W. Parker 1846.

Fourth edition. 8vo. pp. xxvii, [i], 515, [i] + portrait frontis. Modern quarter calf over marbled boards. Effusive full-page inscription on half title, to John Browne (of Chiseldon House, Wiltshire), with blessings in English, Arabic and Hebrew, possibly written on separate occasions as the first is addressed to John Browne Esq and the second (in a slightly freer hand, after dinner?) is addressed to ‘my [or Mrs?] John Browne’ and dated 1 May 1847; it’s entirely possible that Wolff gallantly offered to add a further inscription to Brown’s wife after they met. 

Stoddart, a soldier rather than a diplomat, was sent to Bokhara in 1838 - chiefly to curtail any Russian influence. His imprisonment seems to have arisen from a series of gaffes and the Emir’s natural suspicion of foreign ‘spies’. Conolly, who was well versed in the ways of central Asian diplomacy (and is credited with coining the phrase ‘the great game’) attempted to negotiate his release but instead shared Stoddart’s fate. They were executed when British prestige plumbed new depths in the aftermath of the First Afghan War.  News reached Britain by way of one of Conolly’s Persian servants, but Wolff volunteered to journey to Bokhara himself to confirm their fate. Peter Hopkirk (‘The Great Game’) describes him as “a brave but highly eccentric clergyman” and recounts how he “was lucky to escape with his own life, only doing so, it is said, because his bizarre appearance in full canonicals, made the unpredictable Emir ‘shake with uncontrollable laughter’”.

I won’t say more about Conolly and Stoddart - their story is well known. Mind you, if you’ve never read Hopkirk’s Great Game which I mentioned above, navigate away from this page now, read it cover to cover, and come back when you’ve finished. Fat but unputdownable, and after all these years still the gateway to the subject: now that’s a rare book. Joseph Wolff, though, deserves a wider audience. In the circumstances, with both officers almost certainly dead, he must have been a bit cracked to volunteer his services to the Stoddart and Conolly Committee. It was the culmination of twenty years of missionary travels in the east (see Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, 1860) after which he retired to a quiet Somerset parish, which is presumably where he met John Browne.

Chiseldon House is now a hotel, and the Browne family sold up in 1901. John Browne’s death at the age of 61 is recorded in the Gent’s Mag in 1853, there are a couple of references to him in the Farmer’s Magazine and he was a member of the Wiltshire Topographical Society; he seems to have been a typical gentleman-farmer. I was trying to work out what he and the well-travelled clergyman might have had in common, and other than being of an age I couldn’t come up with much, but they seem to have become friends.

Wolff was presented to his Somerset living in 1845, in the year that the Narrative first appeared, when Wolff was firmly in the public eye (four English editions plus a US edition within two years); presumably he met Browne somewhere in the English countryside, and they simply got on. The first inscription, as I noted above, has an air of formality, as if the book was sent in the post or presented at a first meeting. The second is much freer, and without any real justification I imagine it being penned over the post-prandial port. I’d wondered if Browne was a scholar, versed in Arabic and Hebrew, but I think it more likely that he simply asked Wolff to write something in those languages. Although Wolff’s father was a German rabbi and Wolff was himself brought up in the Jewish faith, it’s noticeable that his Arabic script is much more fluent, although that may also be the hypothetical port talking. Here’s a full transcript of the page:

John Browne Esq from his humble servant Joseph Wolff

[in Arabic:] “I commit thee to God, who rules the world: under His gaze, good-health and well-being, to the end of the world.”

To desire both together, God & the world, is incompatible & folly.

To Mrs John Browne 1 May 1847

[in Hebrew:] “May you be blessed and may the Lord light up your face, and peace be upon you” [also signed in Hebrew by Wolff].

The Lord bless thee & keep thee & let the light of His countenance shine upon thee & give thee peace. Jo. Wolff

[The handwriting isn’t clear, but the second part of the inscription appears to be addressed to Browne’s wife: a verse in Arabic for him, Hebrew for her; very even handed.]

Just time for a quick, tangentially related map-fix: this is Edward Stanford’s historical map showing the expansion of the Russian Empire, from the first trade edition of his London Atlas, 1887. This is one of the finest Victorian Atlases, for my money. Edward Stanford (senior) acquired John Arrowsmith’s stock in 1874, including the plates for Arrowsmith’s London Atlas. Stanford’s version, published in Jubilee year and dedicated to Queen Victoria, is considered to be his last significant work before his retirement, although later editions were revised by his heirs, in keeping with the latest information. Francis Herbert’s article on the development of the atlas (Imago Mundi, Vol. 41, 1989) is the standard work here. There’s only one historical map in the whole atlas, and this is it. It’s not a map of London in Queen Elizabeth’s day (actually, there isn’t a detailed map of central London at all in the first edition) or a map of the growth of British Empire, but a map of the rapidly expanding Russian Empire, and that’s a very a good indicator of how Russia was bogey-man-in-chief in mid/late Victorian popular culture until the Germans took over the role at the turn of the twentieth century (think also of Fred Rose’s Russian octopus, also reaching east, which made its debut at the time of the Great Eastern Crisis a decade earlier). Independent Tartary as Wolff had known it was under Russian control within twenty years, and later editions of Stanford’s map dutifully recorded futher boundary changes: by 1895 the Russians were just a few miles short of Afghanistan.

 I’ve just spent an agreeable couple of days at the annual ABA bookfair in Chelsea Old Town Hall. I’ve wriggled out of exhibiting at fairs for more than a decade (with the honourable exception of the London Map Fair on the grounds that a). it’s the largest specialist fair of it’s kind in Europe and b). I’m one of the organisers). My main reasons for fair avoidance are that I’m already in my shop for six days a week, and keeping the shop open with a minimum of disruption always has to take priority. However, Leo Cadogan took over the running of the Chelsea fair this year (with tremendous aplomb) and he came up with a suggestion for a shared Cecil Court stand which it would have been churlish to refuse, so I was part of a much enhanced Cecil Court contingent which exhibited at this year’s fair.

Catching up with friends and colleagues is always congenial, but there were one or two real discoveries to be made. I was absolutely delighted with this unusual 1863 chart of light houses and light vessels around the coasts of Great Britain and north western Europe:

Prepared by A.G. Findlay, it was published under the imprint of map and chartmaker R.H. Laurie (of Laurie & Whittle fame; Findlay became manager, and took over the business on Laurie’s death in 1858) for Trinity House, and it’s the Trinity House arms which are engraved above the title and blocked in gilt on the covers. It’s a splendid example of a chart which is both bel et utile: precise, subtle engraving and delicate hand-shading showing the nature (type of beam and frequency of light pulses) and reach of each light -which is highly complex as they often overlap. Brilliant engraving.

On that score, the actual coverage of the coast strikes me as remarkably impressive, but then, I suppose that most lights had been established in one form or another well before this time (we’re well into the classic period of modern lighthouses). The first edition was published in 1833, although that was an entirely different animal (somewhat smaller, compensating with large-scale insets of the Firths of Forth and Tay, Liverpool Bay and the mouth of the Thames).

It’s such a specialist field that no edition will have been printed in large numbers, and as using an obsolete chart would have been positively dangerous I suspect that the survival rate is pretty poor. On the other hand, this is a substantial piece (as befits the subject matter), printed with great care and handsomely and solidly bound. The gothic brass clasps are a lovely touch - most superior! This example bears the armorial bookplate of liberal politician W.E. Baxter, so it came from a good home.

I had actually begun packing up when I spotted a guide to Wyld’s Great Globe propped up on a neighbouring stand. It wasn’t there earlier … proof that not everything good goes in the first five minutes of a fair! Guides to panoramas and exhibitions like this are extremely scarce ephemeral items, and I have a particular soft spot for James Wyld the younger and his monster globe in Leicester Square. For anyone in Cecil Court this is local history and for anyone who likes maps, well, I can only say that it’s something I would dearly love to have seen myself. If only plans for a permanent ‘Cosmos Institute’ had worked out! As it is, Wyld’s guide is as close as I can get: written by Wyld himself it’s a testament to the man’s passion for geography and history, as well as his entrepreneurial flair.

You might wonder what the largest globe ever made was doing parked in the middle of Leicester Square in the first place, but the square’s association with popular entertainment is nothing new. After Frederick, George III’s son and heir, died prematurely (possibly after being hit by a cricket ball) at his home in Leicester House, Leicester Square became rather shabby. Jerry White (London in the Nineteenth Century) describes how it became a semi-permanent indoor fair for London’s middle classes, and it was also the birth place of the panorama (Burford’s rotunda). It was also first choice for the site of the Great Exhibition itself. So the derelict garden at it’s heart was the natural location for Wyld’s globe: 60 feet in diameter, the earth’s surface modelled in plaster relief around the interior, perfectly to scale and accessible for close inspection via four viewing platforms, gas-lit and ferociously hot, but still a marvel. The doors opened in 1851, one month after the Crystal Palace. Wyld includes the building among other London landmarks in the border of his New Map of London, but this is not mere self aggrandisement - it was indeed the most popular attraction in London outside the Great Exhibition itself.

Detail from the border of Wyld’s 1851 New Map of London

As the decade wore on Wyld introduced other elements to maintain interest: waxworks, stuffed beasts, topical exhibitions including one on the Crimean War which featured a relief map of Sebastopol … but the buildings were torn down in 1862. There’s an occasional whiff of scandal and skulduggery attached to Wyld’s business dealings, and there’s a discernable sniffiness in some accounts of his turf wars with the Ordnance Survey, and even in discussions regarding his indisputable flair for self promotion. Educational as the Great Globe was, it’s true that samples of Wyld’s own maps were displayed in the gallery surrounding it, and this guide itself was also an excellent advertisement for his stock. But Wyld was a rare beast: he inherited a flourishing business and actually grew it; he elected to follow his passion (this little book wasn’t written by someone who could have earned a living selling peas just as easily), brought the joys of cartography to a wider public, and still contrived to earn a decent living. Definitely on my list of map-trade heroes.

First page of Wyld’s 12 page catalogue at the end of the guide - I’ll have as much fun with this as with the rest of it!

Few things in my corner of the rare booktrade seem to cause as much confusion and consternation as the colouring of maps: when, by whom and why? Commercially viable colour-printing didn’t really take off until the mid nineteenth-century, and there’s a transitional period of at least thirty years or so when hand-colouring of maps was still the norm rather than the exception. Even at the turn of the twentieth-century, it was sometimes more economical (especially for specialist publications) to use a stencil technique such as pochoir (see, for example, Booth’s famous poverty maps).

Detail of 1900 edition of Charles Booth’s Poverty Map of West Central London, centred on Cecil Court (coloured red for “well-to-do”; how times change!)

Prior to that, when a map was printed -whether from a woodblock or an engraved metal plate - it came off the press black and white. The question is then whether it was hand-coloured for the publisher at the time of printing, for which the purchaser generally paid a premium, or has been hand-coloured later, which usually means within the last 100 years (with very little in between: it would be unusual for someone with a black and white seventeenth-century Dutch atlas to reach for a paintbrush in, say, the 1820s). Maps described as having original/early/contemporary colour generally belong in the first category; maps with later/recent/modern handcolour (or ‘hand-coloured’ without qualification) in the second. It’s not the end of the world either way, as long as the map is accurately described and you know exactly what you are buying. You can then make an informed choice about what works for your collection.

There are some maps (eg Coronelli’s) which were generally never intended to receive colour and others (such as maps by Seutter or Homann) which were almost always coloured. There are maps where provision was made for colouring (or at least for determining colour, eg the colour-code key on Speed’s county maps) which were hardly ever coloured at the time (and which therefore attract a significant premium when they are found with original hand-colour). And there are also maps, such as Blaeu’s, which are found with original hand-colour as often as not. It’s a complex issue.

Recently, though, I’ve begun to hear people say that they want black and white maps because they want maps in ‘original’ condition, and it’s worth bearing in mind that many maps were coloured ‘originally’. There are very good reasons for colouring maps, as I’ll go on to show, and at various times in history skilled artists could earn a good living as colourists, for example colouring the great Dutch atlases of Golden Age Amsterdam.

Original colour can be a curse as well as a blessing. I’ve just seen a Janssonius heptarchy (Anglo-Saxon England) which ordinarily is a highly decorative and desirable map, but in this instance it was folded too soon after it was coloured (in the seventeenth-century) resulting in adhesion damage (the surface of the paper has adhered to the facing page and torn away in strips. Ouch.) One can also have problems with offsetting and oxidisation (worst case scenario: the parts painted with copper-based green pigments turn brown and the weakened paper cracks or falls out of the map altogther). On the other hand, modern colour by a skilled colourist can enhance a map. In general terms, though, one pays a premium for fine original colour.

As for how to tell original colour from modern colour, the best advice I can give is to buy from people who know what they are talking about - that is, until you have handled enough pieces to be sure yourself. There are no absolutely hard and fast rules: it’s a case of staring at too many old bits of paper for too long, until it becomes obvious. There are things to look for, eg show-through, particularly from the green pigments, onto the verso, but that doesn’t take into account paper-quality, storage or the composition of the pigment itself. The absence of ‘show through’ doesn’t necessarily mean that the colour is modern (and it’s presence doesn’t always make it old …) This isn’t an attempt to create an air of mystery where there shouldn’t be one, it’s just that experience is the best guide and I have no wish to steer anyone in the wrong direction.

Time to look at some maps with original hand-colour. Firstly, here’s a map of Cumbria by Blaeu, printed in Amsterdam in 1646 and hand-coloured at the time. It hasn’t been messed about with or augmented in any way since (original colour is rarely muted):

The simple outline colour heightens the county boundaries, making the map easier to read at a glance. The colouring of the elaborate cartouche is more indulgent - making the map a luxury item. Don’t get me wrong, the decorative elements are not superfluous: they there to be read, as much as any aspect of the cartography. The royal and English coats of arms had been a feature of county cartography (perhaps a symbol of royal authority and control) ever since Elizabeth I sponsored the engraving of Christopher Saxton’s county maps (the first national atlas) in the 1570s. The armorial bearings of notable local figures could be considered a legacy of John Speed’s antiquarianism (his county maps were engraved to accompany his history of Britain, with historical notes of all kinds, and the coats of arms used by Blaeu and Janssonius were copied directly) but they also represent the established order of things. Colour certainly makes them more impressive, more instantly recognisable (and it had to be accurate, so it couldn’t be done on the cheap), but it’s altogether less functional. The cartouche is a distillation of Cumbria, as seen from Amsterdam:

Rugged fells, with hardy fell sheep and a somewhat less hardy looking shepherd in the foreground, and general plowing and sowing going on in the middle distance. It’s a delightful pastoral scene, brought vividly to life through the skilful use of colour. But contrast this with a map of the Tirol  by Homann, printed in Nuremberg c. 1730:

The use of full-body colour is simple but effective. It does the job, but without any of the subtlety of its predecessor (and probably for a fraction of the cost!) The cartouche is equally elaborate (equally mountainous, even …) but the impact is down to the strength of the engraving rather than deployment of colour. It’s absolutely typical of its time and place. Here’s a second map by Homann, a map of Europe, but here the colour has been applied to show religious rather than political boundaries:

A printed key has been pasted into the lower margin to explain the use of colour (from ‘reformed Catholics’ in Britain, to Muslims within the Ottoman Empire) and where distinctions are far from clear, for example in Hungary and Transilvania, bright dabs of colour (independent of any engraving) indicate the mix of religions:

Here’s a final, effective, use of colour; it’s an early example of physical geography (and an unusual projection) by Dezauche, showing the watersheds of the world, printed in Paris c. 1780:

Dezauche purchased plates by Guillaume de l’Isle and his brother-in-law Philippe Buache in 1780, adding his own imprint (this plate was first issued in 1756) but what is important in this context is how elegantly and simply the colour emphasises how mountain ranges act as continental divides, with the waters on either side flowing into different oceans. Not impossible by any means, but so much harder to achieve in black and white …

The presentation of maps - how they were bought and sold and how they were first used - is something I think about rather a lot (far too much?) It’s important to recall that virtually all early map-makers were businessmen first, artists and scientists second. There was little state-sponsored map-making, no requirement to map stuff just because it was there. And however much they may have delighted in their chosen profession (and there have always been easier ways of earning a living) staying afloat was an ever-present worry for most of them. As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s hardly a page of the new dictionary of British Map Engravers without at least one bankruptcy on it!

Much of the scholarly discussion concerning the output of early map-makers revolves around the atlases and travel books they produced. Separately issued maps have a long history, but the survival rate is tiny - almost all of the early maps still in circulation today owe their existence to being bound between a couple of protective covers from the time they they were first purchased as useful objects, until the moment a couple of centuries or so later when someone else decided they had now become of antiquarian interest and were worth looking after. That includes maps which were initially intended for separate sale, but which were pressed into service to fill gaps elsewhere.

One could certainly buy, separately, maps which were printed from the same engraved metal plates as those published in the great atlases, but those which have survived tend to have been preserved in books. For example, one sometimes encounters Ortelius ‘atlas’ maps with blank versos, which were probably bound in when supplies of the sheet with text in the appropriate language (Dutch, French, Latin etc) printed on the back had run out. A few years ago I handled a lovely first edition of Speed’s Theatre where a couple of county maps were of the rare broadsheet issue (Warwickshire and Cheshire, printed by Thomas Snodham for Sudbury and Humble c. 1615). The descriptive text was printed in the form of side panels, but these had been trimmed off and pasted to the verso of the maps; it’s not hard to imagine a harassed bookseller, lacking a couple of counties with pre-printed versos, reaching for his pile of broadsheets so that he could complete an order for a whole atlas. Four centuries before ‘print on demand’, when setting up pages of letterpress was both costly and time consuming, getting the numbers right first time (and every time) was the key to survival. Having piles of unsold expensively printed paper could be as ruinous as not having enough …

My commercial instincts tell me it’s likely that more maps were sold separately than were sold in atlases. It makes sense to me that more people could afford individual maps of where they lived, where they had travelled or had commercial interests, or where events of significant interest were unfolding, than could afford the serious outlay involved in a buying a complete atlas. However, I suspect that survival rates are so low that it won’t be possible to prove it conclusively.

At a certain juncture someone had a bright idea: cut a printed map into panels and paste it onto some hard-wearing cloth such as linen or even hessian, and one instantly has a map which is both portable and durable; if the map is simply pasted to a piece of cloth there will be wear at the folds (if folded to make it ‘fit for the pocket’), but if the map is dissected and the panels are spaced apart slightly, that can be avoided. By the nineteenth century the range of options had become increasingly sophisticated, increasingly hierarchical one might say. One finds maps with carefully graded scales of charges printed on the covers or in the margins detailing the price for what is essentially the same basic map, but plain or hand-coloured, sold as a flimsy sheet of paper, or dissected, mounted on cloth, and folded into covers or a slipcase. Unsurprisingly it’s the durable, ‘deluxe’, coloured and mounted maps which, if any, have come down to us (and even here survival rates aren’t amazing; just try looking for a specific edition of a folding map!) 

Grubby but illustrative, the cover of Philips’ Reduced Ordnance Map of London c. 1887: Roads &c. Coloured in Case 1/-, Mounted on Cloth in Case 3/6 [as here], Full Coloured, Folded in Case 2/-, Mounted on Cloth in Case 4/6, On Roller, Varnished, 5/6.

But when did all this start? Most survivors date from the mid eighteenth-century or later and it’s tempting to say, when earlier maps turn up which have been given the full dissection/mounting treatment, that it must have been done later. I can only counter that with a one-word question: why? A map I discovered recently is a case in point. It’s a Henry Overton issue of Speed’s county map of Buckinghamshire, c. 1730, and it has been trimmed to the neatline and dissected:

Henry’s father, John Overton, bought the well-worn copper plates for Speed’s county maps shortly before 1700, when they were already almost a century old. They are among the most famous British maps of the seventeenth century, published in numerous editions, and by the time Overton senior got in on the act the plates had passed through many hands and the impressions had become rather light. His son Henry altered the imprint and updated them by adding the roads - following the example set by John Ogilby in the 1670s. Although the plates survived for another half century or more, Henry Overton was the last to market them as functional ‘modern’ maps. The outline colour we see here is typical, and to some extent served to disguise the weakness of the impression. The cloth the map is mounted on is also interesting:

The quality of the backing, which is quite coarse, is certainly consistent with a mid-eighteenth century date, or earlier. Overton is known to have offered Speed’s maps for sale separately, and although the handwritten paper label is later (probably early ninteenth-century) the map itself seems to be as Overton sold it. I can’t think of a convincing reason why someone would have taken the trouble to dissect an obsolete map a century later.

A friend of mine has a set of Morden counties which he believes were dissected and mounted c. 1700, close to the time of their original issue in Camden’s Britannia. In time, I’m sure, evidence will come to light to push this way of selling maps back by half a century or more.

Forty copies of the new Dictionary of British Map Engravers (Laurence Worms & Ashley Baynton-Williams; Rare Book Society 2011, £125) were wheeled into my shop on Friday afternoon - after I’d explained that a forklift with a wooden pallet wouldn’t make it onto Cecil Court, let alone through the shop door! The distributor wasn’t being needlessly dramatic as this is a substantial volume in every respect: thick, solidly produced (in an aesthetically pleasing ‘this-won’t-fall-apart-the-first-time-you-open-it’ sort of way), and above all it is both well written and immensely scholarly. There’s something fresh on each of its 774 pages and it supersedes all comparable works at a stroke. I’ve only had a few hours to make its acquaintance, but I know that it will be sitting within easy reach of my desk for years, if not decades, to come. We’ll become old friends.

The blurb on the jacket describes it as “essential for all serious libraries, all serious map and print collectors, all serious scholars of the printed image in the British Isles, every map and print-dealer”. I’m not sure who wrote that (Laurence or Ashley?) but I can’t quibble. I would extend the sentiment to embrace everyone dealing with illustrated works published in the British Isles before the end of the nineteenth century (as the subjects only had to begin their careers before 1850 to warrant inclusion). Not every engraver will be present - not every engraver is known to have made a map - but there is plenty of crossover with other genres. The book will also have a reach far beyond the British Isles: British engravers mapped the world, and their work is to be found in collections worldwide. I could add that you might also enjoy it if you are only a little bit serious: if, like me, you enjoy dipping into dictionaries at random.

Laurence signing in the shop on Monday.

The dictionary is the result of at least twenty five years of research by both authors, both of whom are highly knowledgeable members of the rare map trade. Laurence and Ashley had been working independently until, in a moment of serendipity a few months ago, they realised that Ashley had been concentrating on the physical aspects of the maps themselves while Laurence had mostly been unearthing biographical information about the engravers who made them. With so little overlap the outcome of their combined half-century of scholarship is extraordinary. 

Ashley dropped in on Wednesday - all copies signed and ready for the launch!

The scope of the book is broad. It covers engravers rather than everyone involved in the map trade (map sellers and map makers are not necessarily the same thing, although the distinction is often blurred). However, within that remit, a decision has been made to be as inclusive as possible. Anyone who can be there is there, including foreign born engravers working in the British Isles (or for British publishers) and British born engravers who made new lives overseas, often in America, Canada and Australia. John Rocque properly merits four pages, but by the same token Dirck Gripj of Amsterdam who engraved two of the maps for Speed’s Prospects also rates a mention. There are valiant (and plausible) attempts to identify engravers on (quite literally) the margins of great works, for example the “J.T.” who engraved five of the sheets for Horwood’s landmark map of London in the 1790s. I think I’ve finally unscrambled the four James Basires  (a singular lack of imagination in that family) and we’re as close as we’ll every be to distinguishing between the three James Wallises operating in London in the early nineteenth century (the bookseller; the jeweller and engraver; the map-engraver and bookseller).

To be included one only has to be known for one map, such as John Spurr (a map of matrimony in 1839), and engraving need not have been the primary occupation of the subject. Indeed, the broad range of activities which engravers turned to for financial support is one of the most engaging aspects of the book. John Westwood of Birmingham is described as “engraver, die-sinker, coffin furniture-maker, scale-maker, trade-token manufacturer, medalist etc” (my italics) and Joseph Zanetti is listed as “printseller, publisher, carver, gilder, looking-glass and picture-frame maker’. Both Westwood and Zanetti were declared bankrupt - another feature of the entries on almost every page. Many of the greatest and most original cartographers shared the same fate. Making a living from maps has never been easy.

The research linking maps with their makers gives a fresh sense of the scale of of the achievements of mapmakers such as Mogg or Reynolds, who created a far broader body of work than I had imagined. It also sheds light on who worked for whom - the relationships between engraver and publisher. And the ferreting through wills, census returns and parish registers (not to mention trial records …) puts flesh on the bones of people who had long been reduced to names on maps. In some cases it has even established gender (E can stand for Elizabeth, and S for Selina as well as Sydney).

Some of the stories which have emerged are sensational. There’s at least one case of high treason (John Seller the elder) and several cases of forgery - always a temptation for highly skilled engravers for whom banknotes might prove more remunerative than maps. I now know that W.R. Gardner engraved far more interesting material than I’d given him credit for (e.g. Bradshaw’s Canal Map, plus some of those banknotes I just mentioned) and I also know that he absconded with £10,000 of ill-gotten gains, last seen taking ship for New York. I’ve also discovered that so eminent a figure as John Tallis was from Birmingham (my old stamping-ground; I shall now imagine him speaking with a midlands twang) and after he arrived in London he lived round the corner from where I live today until he too, like so many of his colleagues, was declared bankrupt; he’s buried in an unmarked grave.

Talking of accents, Robert Morden, the seventeenth-century mapmaker, also appears in the historical record as ‘Mordent, Mordant and Mardent’, which the authors suggest may be a clue to a north country origin. Identifying ‘our’ Robert Morden with these references in a wide range of sources adds a great deal of colour. Knowing that Samuel Pepys was among Morden’s customers and that Robert Hooke took coffee with him at Garraway’s and Mann’s will add an indefinable something to his work! Every time I look at examples of his work - even his county maps, which are still widely available - where I had formerly appreciated them only for the clarity and elegance of the workmanship I now know something of the man who created them.

The book is lavishly and imaginatively illustrated: maps, portraits, invoices, receipts, advertisements and trade cards, and some surprising images of the shops themselves (who knew that Rocque’s shop was next to the Rummer Tavern in Hogarth’s Night?) Many of the images have been supplied by the BM and the trade (I’m credited for a John Bartholomew bill-head and the cover of a geographical game published by John Walker) but the core of the collection was assembled by Ashley over many years. For as long as I’ve known him he’s been ready to snap (and carefully file) images of any map he’s never seen before, and it was a joy to recognise old friends put to good use at last: for example, the cover of John Passmore’s 1847 edition of Wallis’ Railway Game, and the proposals for Regent Street engraved by Michael Thompson for Faden in 1814 (coincidentally I bought that back recently - it’s hanging on the wall of the shop as I type). 

The family trees are among the most original aspects of the book. For the first time one can trace the family and professional relationships which bound the early British map trade together into a coherent whole - ties of marriage and apprenticeship as well as birth. Thanks to Laurence’s diagrams one can follow an unbroken chain from the Elizabethan engraver William Rogers all the way through to James Wyld, cartographer to George IV. One can also follow the line that leads from John Seller to Thomas Jefferys and Thomas Kitchin by way of Emanuel Bowen. Benjamin Baker (engraver to the Ordnance Survey) no longer seems an isolated figure: as Laurence explained at the London Map Fair lecture in June, he was deeply embedded in the trade.

Inspired by practices developed by some of the engravers themselves (e.g. Richard Blome) Laurence and Ashley decided to publish the book by subscription (‘never again’, said Laurence), but there are still copies available.  

‘This will be indispensable’ I said, when the books arrived. ‘It’s awesome’ said the friend I was drinking coffee with, rather more succinctly. He’s right. We’ll be having a launch party in Cecil Court on 21st of this month - drop me a line if you’d like to come along. You can always buy a copy of the book while you’re here… 

Just a couple of snaps of the launch celebrations. You all know who you are …

My friend Angus O’Neill (Omega Bookshop) found this gem of a bookmark tucked into a 1936 pocket edition of Norman Douglas’s South Wind, an outré title which - at that time - carried with it certain connotations. It rates an appearance in Clouds of Witness, the second of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Peter Wimsey novels (old favourites of mine) as conclusive proof that the victim was an all-round bad egg.  (He also cheated at cards, so you can appreciate what sort of bounders read Norman Douglas!) Having dealt with the morals of the original owner, now onto the bookmark itself. It was designed in the 1950s, perhaps (Angus suggests) by Ashley Havinden, or a fairly close follower of his. The wording was used as a chapter heading in Anthony Rota’s entertaining booktrade memoir Books in the Blood (Pinner, 2002) but I can find no other link.

As a generic phrase “You are always welcome in a bookshop” sounds innocent enough, but it’s so palpably untrue that everyone I’ve shown it to has fallen about laughing. So much so that I’ve promised to run off a few copies to give to friends! As any fule kno, the welcome afforded by bookshops is among the warmest on the planet. Intimate knowledge of issue points (denoting edition or state) is not a prerequisite for admission - that’s what the bookseller is there for - so just a spot of general enthusiasm and courtesy will do nicely.  Nobody should feel nervous about stepping across the threshold. But I’ve witnessed some extraordinary scenes since I opened my own bookshop, and there’s a point where the invitation can be subtly withdrawn …

I’m not one for posting up signs around the shop (‘no mobile phones’, ‘use both hands’, ‘no wittering’ etc) but I admire my predecessor here at 8 Cecil Court, Robert Chris. His daughter in law Val sent me this photo, probably taken in the forties (he held court here for a good half century, until a fortnight before his death aged 86):

The sign pinned to the wall above the mantelpiece reads: “Do not mistake courtesy on my part as an invitation to stay all day”. I’ve been told (with affection on the part of the teller) that in his day he was the rudest man on Cecil Court. Quite an accolade!

I threatened to come back to thematic and statistical cartography in an earlier post. It does sound like a threat – dry as dust – but actually the development of this sort of map-making in the second half of the nineteenth-century is a real eye-opener. I’ve been leafing though a copy of Bartholomew’s Atlas of the World’s Commerce (London: Newnes, 1907 … Oh, my heart, my beating heart!) which supplies a wonderful snapshot of the Edwardian world. There are maps showing the world trade in every conceivable commodity - from pearls to tobacco, via beer, asphalt and wax - and of course recording the open trade in commodities such as ivory, feathers and opium.

This was towards the end of the era known as the ‘great binge’, roughly 1870-1914. Britain was a major player in the opium trade, having won two ‘opium wars’ which kept the Chinese market open (it more than balanced out the market in tea and ensured that Chinese silver was flowing in the right direction; one of my tutors at university, playing devil’s advocate, described British India as the world’s first narco-military state). There were plenty of objections even in mid nineteenth-century Britain, but in this Edwardian atlas opium is still described as ‘a pleasant narcotic’. India still dominated the market overall, but almost half of British opium was imported from Turkey.

The first Chinese opium dens opened in London slightly after the second opium war, in the 1860s. This illustration from Doré’s controversial work (London: a pilgrimage. 1872; he was only supposed to show the nice bits, but went wandering in the docks and rookeries) is captioned as being the model for the opium den in Dickens’s ‘Edwin Drood’, and given the date and Jerry White’s appraisal in London in the Nineteenth-Century that’s not unreasonable – there were very few possible contenders in this period.

Class A drugs have never been so widely (and legally) available as they were for the next half century: morphine, heroin, opiates of all kinds (baby kicking up at night? Try a spoonful of laudanum …) In mainstream contemporary fiction, the most obvious example of a functioning junkie is Sherlock Holmes; an occasional user of morphine, Holmes famously preferred to inject a seven per cent solution of cocaine, facing only the occasional remonstrance from the medical professional he shared rooms with. In the latest BBC adaptation Sherlock, updated to the present day, the detective does nothing worse than nicotine patches. Even tobacco is out of bounds (mind you, ‘three patch problem’ was genuinely funny). A sign of the times. In our Edwardian atlas it’s all legal and above board.

Some of the other commodities seem outlandish until one stops and thinks for a moment. Ornamental feathers, for example, which were chiefly imported from Cape Colony, with France coming a close second. But such was the demand for feathers in this period (think of all those hats …) that some species were driven to the brink of extinction. Here’s the map:

And just for fun here’s the cover - very much of its time (with a nod to earlier eras: an Elizabethan galleon which appears to be flying the White Ensign, sailing into the rising sun and leaving behind all sorts of representations of successful trade and commerce on the quay, including a cornucopia brimming with good things and two allegorical figures: the great port of London, perhaps, wearing the crown of a walled city and brandishing - no other word - a laurel wreath; flanked by Peace: prosperous and peaceful trade. The Pax Britannica in fact.)

Cartographic games – often using a map as the board (like Risk) - are a genre in their own right, and one which has attracted ever increasing amounts of scholarly interest. Take Jill Shefrin’s detailed study of a particular publisher of juvenilia, published last year: The Dartons. Publishers of Educational Aids, Pastimes & Juvenile Ephemera, 1787-1876 (Graaf, 2010). But it would be a mistake to assume that all games were aimed at children, and every now and again something comes along which throws a light on that. So I was delighted to be offered a previously unknown board game of the Great Rebellion, or Mutiny, complete with its fragile lithographed rule sheet, and published at the time. It was brought in by a proper old-school runner I know (not an easy thing to be in this internet age), and it’s already found an excellent home. My wife still wants to play it - wish I’d kept a scan!   

It’s a controversial subject for a game - difficult enough to write about dispassionately even now. The Indian Mutiny or Rebellion of 1857-58 rocked the comfortable assumptions of the mid Victorian world; it probably had a more profound impact on the Victorian psyche than any other comparable event of the era, including the Crimean War. Politically speaking it was the final nail in the coffin of the East India Company - which had long been in a ludicrously anomalous position for a trading company - and it ushered in direct rule by the British Crown: the Raj. In more general terms the atrocities committed by individuals on both sides soured Anglo-Indian relations. Most of the policies of the Raj (often fundamentally and bizarrely contradictory) can be traced to this period – and to the desire to prevent anything like it from happening again.You’ll have gathered that I find it extraordinary that a game was devised so close to events! As it’s a very rare thing – no copies were recorded in institutional holdings when I acquired it – perhaps contemporaries thought as I do, and the game never caught on. But given the general rarity of ephemeral material of this nature, it’s impossible to say with certainty.   

The game is simply titled “The Game of Empire”, printed by F.J. Whiteman for an individual identified only as “Cochrane”. The board is a diagrammatic folding map, representing India - dissected into 16 sheets and laid on linen for durability - which folds into cloth covers; there is a printed paper label on the upper cover, repeating an extract from the verso of the rules sheet, and showing how counters should be set up to commence the game. The rules sheet, printed on both sides, describes Victoria as “Queen of India, Empress of Hindostan”. Disraeli created the strikingly similar title “Empress of India” for her in 1876 – Cochrane was slightly ahead of the times. We don’t have a printed date though, so some detective work was in order.

The printer, F.J. Whiteman of 19 Little Queen Street, was established by 1851 when he published a poem by one Thomas Colsey, “A Record of the Great Exhibition”. I haven’t read it, but at a guess the firm was no stranger to “vanity” publishing. We have the following information from the rules, which links us specifically to the events of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58: “the Pink represent the Queen’s Troops, the Blue the Troops of the late East India Company, and Orange the Rebel Sepoys.” ‘Late’ gives us a clue - we can deduce that the game was printed after the Government of India Act of August 1858.

And what of Mr Cochrane, whose name crops up repeatedly? “The author and publisher, Cochrane, 283, Strand, gives instructions gratis, and offers a Guinea Board to any person beating him two games”. Unfortunately, apart from this delightful image (a nineteenth century version of Lord Monckton’s Eternity game!) there isn’t much to go on. No initials or anything handy like that. 283 The Strand was something of a black hole in this period, used as offices by a number of small agencies. At one time it was the address of a Newspaper Advertising Agency and it is the address given for a number of publications such as The Age. A number of other offices were based there, including that of ‘Le Grand of the Strand’, the private detective hired by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in the wake of the Ripper murders. By the 1880s, certainly, the address was rather run down.

One can only speculate as to whether anyone ever won a ‘Guinea Board’, or if Cochrane’s hypothetical Sepoys drove the British from India as often as not in the course of play. What is clear from the details of Cochrane’s arrangements at the Strand office - and his offer of prize money – is that this game was intended for an adult market (an aspect of cartographic games which still needs to be explored further), and not for children, but even so it’s remarkable that the game was made at the time, and more remarkable still that one could take the part of either side. It’s difficult to convey the level of public horror (hysteria, even) which greeted the publication of documented events such as the Cawnpore massacre (and bear in mind that these could not immediately be disentangled from numerous atrocity stories which had sprung from the fevered imaginations of unreliable authorities). I’m going to try, but putting it into a modern context is tricky. I’m not a gamer myself (I’m stepping onto thin ice when I only know what I read in the papers) but in the last decade several games have caused outrage by allowing players to hijack airliners or fight alongside the Taliban. Might one be coming close to understanding the reaction of the average reader of ‘the Thunderer’ c. 1858? Did Mr Cochrane even recoup the printing costs? This seems to be his only foray into the world of games manufacture …

I’m often asked about satirical maps (really! but I do spend all day in a map shop) and it’s a fascinating field: the maps are decorative and entertainingly inventive, and by their nature they are highly revealing about the societies which produced them. Unfortunately, from a collector’s point of view (not to mention mine) one now needs patience and deep pockets to build a collection, but material does still turn up. The temptation to anthropomorphise (and of course some of the maps are zoomorphic too …) just about everything from clouds to shadows is almost irresistible. Although the earliest map of this kind I know of is an early fourteenth-century map by the disturbed/visionary cleric Opicinus de Canistris which represents the shores of the Mediterranean as a king and queen, I can’t believe that he was the first.   

Caricature or picture maps, political or playful, certainly go right back to the earliest days of printed map making. There is a whole series of maps showing ‘Europe as a lady’ or ‘Europe as a Queen’. Perhaps the most well known version is this one, from Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia   

Munster’s Cosmographia, a hugely popular compendium of topographical information, folklore and travels, was first published with a modest 26 maps in 1544, mostly borrowed from his Ptolemy of 1540. By the last edition of 1628 the work had swollen to include over 260 maps and views, including, from c. 1588 onwards, this one. However, the idea is considerably earlier:  it was first drawn by Johannes Putsch (Bucius) in 1537, and developed by theologian Heinrich Buenting in his Itinerarium Sacrae Scriptura of 1581 and Mathias Quad in 1587. There are other less well known variants on the theme – for example a similar map was engraved for a German newsbook, the Relatione Universalis, c. 1598. That’s also worth illustrating as I’ve only seen it once:

Europe is a depicted as a Queen: Spain is the crowned head, England and Wales the arm wielding the sword, the orb is gripped by Italy (an arm, not a boot this time!) and the skirts reach Scandinavia. The Relatione Universalis or the Continuatio, in which it appeared was an early newsbook, a precursor of the newspaper and periodical, which related contemporary historical events. It was published twice a year to coincide with the Frankfurt book fair in spring and autumn and therefore is generically known as a ‘Messrelation’. The most famous were written by Conrad Lautenbach (1534-95) under the pseudonynm Jacobus Francus and the series was continued in the same name after Lautenbach’s death. It’s finely engraved, much more subtle than the Munster woodcut, and I’d quite like another copy!

Europe is personified as a Queen on the early editions of the title-page of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas and again, with the other continents paying tribute, as a vignette within Henricus Hondius’s double-hemisphere world-map of 1630. (It’s worth noting the relationship between these purely satirical creations and political iconography contained within the decorative elements of maps in general). Over a period of a century the concept had become a familiar one, perhaps suggestive to contemporary readers of Europe’s proper place in the order of things, of her place set above the other continents. There is a suggestion that the figure is not a woman, but represents Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1519-56) and King of Spain (1516-56), the argument being that Spain was the crowned head of Europe. Just possibly this was Bucius’ original idea, but if so it took on a life of its own.

I think I’d better skim quickly over the next century or so, skating over Buenting’s other maps (Asia as Pegasus and the world as a clover leaf on the basic TO pattern) and, beginning with Aitzinger’s map of 1583, the whole series of fantastically beautiful Leo Belgicus (later Leo Hollandicus) maps, which chart the phases of the bloody and brutal Dutch struggle for independence from Spain – the Eighty Years’ War. Other noteworthy creations include Balbinus’ Bohemia as a rose, centred on Prague (1677), and Gillray’s more earthy response to the threat of Napoleonic invasion in 1793: a hearty (if hardly deferential) caricature of George III contained within the coastline of England and Wales, defecating explosively on the French bumboats. I’m also going to pass over assorted whimsical maps inspired by subjects such as matrimony and gastronomy, and general caricature maps of countries. Another time.

Revolutions, political upheavals and sparring between the great powers characterise the Victorian age, fertile ground for satire, and the second part of the nineteenth-century saw a flowering of this kind of map. The obvious candidate for discussion is Fred Rose but I’d like to stray off the beaten track a little way and illustrate the subject with a map by William Mecham, who drew under the pen name Tom Merry. Here it is: ‘A Map of England: A Modern St. George and the Dragon !!!’

It’s a satirical map of England and Wales illustrating the 1886 Irish Home Rule crisis, published in  the Conservative periodical (and therefore taking the Tory view of things) St Stephen’s Review, in 1888. The Tory leader (Lord Salisbury as St George), successfully spears the dragon Gladstone (who in 1886 was the Liberal Prime Minister), shown with the forked tongue of Home Rule lolling from his mouth; other key figures in the crisis such as Parnell have been worked into his scaly flanks.

Although Gladstone himself was converted to the cause of Irish Home Rule he split his own party; the bill was defeated and Conservatives and Liberal Unionists swept to power in the ensuing general election. Mecham’s skills were not confined to printed periodicals: his ‘lightning cartoons’ were part of a popular music hall stage act - he was the first performer to appear in a British film. His use of cartographic features is ingenious (for example the isle of Wight becomes a pool of dragon’s blood) and the composition recalls earlier caricature maps, such as the late eighteenth century maps by Gillray and Dighton which show figures astride a whale or dolphin. However, Mecham specifically acknowledges Lillie Tennant. As a schoolgirl Tennant designed a series of cartoon maps published under the name ‘Aleph’ in 1869 (Rod Barron has done pioneering work on this); like Mecham she became a popular stage performer, known for her comic songs, and cartoon maps were clearly part of her act. Although the earliest printed depiction by Tennant of England and Wales as George and the Dragon dates from 1912, it was well known to Mecham and his audience 25 years earlier – so well known that Mecham felt honour bound to credit her. Here’s her 1912 map:

I find this cross-referencing absolutely fascinating, as an indication that makers of cartoon and satirical maps were as aware of each other and the tradition within which they worked as the ‘straight’ cartographers who often credited one another as a matter of course.

Keeping on with the theme of Victorian social history, in a recent house-call I picked up a latish edition of John Camden Hotton’s Slang Dictionary, 1885. Not of great commercial value, but irresistible. Hotton himself is fun - a bookseller, publisher (and pornographer) who founded Chatto & Windus. There’s a peculiar English fascination with slang and cant which stretches back over four centuries, at least, and I’m as susceptible as the next person! (Julie Coleman covers the entire subject in four highly entertaining volumes: A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries, 1567-1984; OUP, 2004-2010)

And of course there’s a map - a woodcut frontispiece which is repeated on the front cover (where it is blocked in gilt). The title simply describes it as ‘a cadger’s map of a begging district’ but the according to the text it is a ‘correct facsimile’ of an actual map of a locality near Maidstone in Kent. Hence the inclusion of various extraneous doodles, interpreted by Hotton as sketches of ‘a favourite or noted female’ (Three Quarter Sarah) a cadger, and as the reckoning of a day’s earnings for three tramps (13 shillings: not bad at all if one is thinking in terms of average earnings but less satisfactory using the retail price index. This site is a great place to play around with relative worth: http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare).

The hieroglyphs are a coded way of sharing information: no good (too poor, and know too much); bone (good, but cheese your patter); cooper’d (spoilt by too many tramps calling there); gammy (unfavourable … mind the dog); flummoxed (dangerous, sure of a month in “quod”).  Hotton suggested a Romany origin for the hieroglyphs, not entirely unreasonable in itself (there are links with cant), but he then runs riot with the possibility that they were therefore of great antiquity: “How strange it would be if some modern Belzoni or Champollion …discovered in these beggars’ marks traces of ancient Egyptian or Hindoo sign-writing!” It hasn’t happened yet …

THOSE THAT WILLWORK, THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK, AND THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK …

Henry Mayhew identified a fourth class too – those that need not work – not his chief concern and they don’t make it onto the title-page of London Labour and the London Poor (first edition, London, 1851). I’ve found myself leafing through a copy in the wake of the recent disturbances, which has given me a slightly different perspective. This will be a blog about books and maps, not politics, but I couldn’t help speculating on what a modern Mayhew would make of our London (for the education and titillation of his middle class readers, naturally, like the original); what are our bone-grubbers, dog-sellers and street herbalists - those curious specialist livings which are (barely) to be scratched on the margins of society in all ages?

I made a beeline for the section on the book trade, and felt as though I could have got on pretty well the with street booksellers which Mayhew interviewed and recorded so vividly. Not all that much has changed. It’s still difficult to shift sets of the Spectator (not that odd vols would go any faster these days), and Hudibras (innumerable editions) is still a bit of a dog. One hundred and fifty years fell away in an instant when I was confronted with the irritation of an impoverished bookseller trying to resist knocking 2d off an 8d book for a wealthy chiseller (the man had been looking for it for years, but 8d was just too much; naked profiteering!) The less said the better about people willing to pay an extra penny for good condition secondhand children’s books with clearly printed (much higher) prices on the covers – to give as gifts – reminds me too much of people who must remain nameless!

The woodcut illustrations are well known enough, but still wonderful. The blind bootlace seller; the coster boy and girl ‘tossing the pie man’ (gambling for pies); the dog collar man and the Lucifer match girl, and of course the book auctioneer … they all stare out of the page, set down twenty years ahead of Doré’s controversial work (London: a pilgrimage. 1872). Less well-known are the maps. The map showing ‘the intensity of ignorance’ in England and Wales sounds like mid Victorian hyperbole, but it’s based on the fairly sound idea that levels of education can in some measure be linked to the proportion of people able to write their own names in the marriage register. In the decade 1839-1848 only 18% of Middlesex were unable to sign, but in neighbouring Hertfordshire 54% of newly weds made their mark.

Mayhew also used maps to tackle subjects which it was difficult to deal with directly in the text. His section on prostitution, for example, is prefaced by a rambling discourse on prostitution in the ancient world, and in just about every other corner of the known world in his own age, stretching from Afghanistan to China by way of the West Indies. In complete contrast his maps, backed with copious statistical tables, are direct and sometimes astonishingly specific – for example the map plotting those convicted for the abuse of girls aged 10-12. Quite shocking even for someone like me who has grown up in the age of the red-tops, Mayhew’s maps are not to be skated over.

The golden age of this sort of thematic or statistical cartography probably lies the second half of the century, so Mayhew was ahead of the game, but that’s something for another post.