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Description

A Rare American Published Map of the World

Striking map of the World on Mercator's Projection, from Fielding Lucas' General Atlas.

The map is centered on the Pacific Ocean. The coastlines in northern Alaska and Canada reflect the knowledge obtained by explorers in search of the northwest passage. The details In the western part of North America is based upon Arrowsmith and does not yet show the discoveries of Lewis & Clark.

The Gulf of Corea is shown.

Australia (shown as New Holland) is shown following Flinders' discovery of the Bass Straits, separating the mainland from Tasmania.

Fielding Lucas produced the best engraved and most attractive of all general atlases published in America (the 1823 Tanner and 1825 Finley being Atlases of America). Prior to this work, Lucas had engraved maps for Carey and later Carey & Lea and had produced his New Elegant General Atlas, a highly scarce early work. A number of Virginia's western and northern counties are still not shown.

Undoubtedly one of the most attractive and sought after early 19th Century Atlas maps of Virginia. Usual minor off-setting.

Fielding Lucas Jr. Biography

Fielding Lucas, Jr. (1781-1854) was a prominent American cartographer, engraver, artist, and public figure during the first half of the 19th century.

Lucas was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and moved to Philadelphia as a teenager, before settling in Baltimore. There he launched a successful cartographic career. Lucas's first atlas was announced in early- to mid-1812, with production taking place between September 1812 and December of 1813, by which point the engravings were complete. Bound copies of the atlas -- A new and elegant general atlas: Containing maps of each of the United States -- were available early in the next year, beating Carey to market by about two months. Lucas later published A General Atlas Containing Distinct Maps Of all the known Countries in the World in the early 1820s.