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Description

An Exceptional English Map of the Low Countries

Fine large format engraved map of the Netherlands, published by Herman Moll. This map includes original hand color in outline, by province.

Includes large inset plans and views of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Groningen, Middleburg, and Utrecht. Moll also shows King William's palace.

The inset map in the upper left is titled: "A Chart of Part of the Coast Sands and Banks of England and Holland &c. with the Depth of Water in Fathoms, each Fathom containing 6 Foot."

Moll includes an attractive engraved dedication in the lower left corner: "To the Right Honourable Charles Lord Viscount Townshend &c."

Condition Description
Engraving on 18th-century laid paper. Original hand-color in outline. Moderate toning of folds. Minor foxing.
Herman Moll Biography

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s. 

Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. 

Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.