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Stock# 65547
Description

The First and Only English Edition of Ortelius's Magnum Opus. A Fine, Tall Example with Dark Impressions of this Extremely Rare Atlas. The First English-Language Folio Atlas of the World.

The 1606 edition of Ortelius's Theatrum is the both the most important English-language world atlas ever published and the most desirable edition of any of Ortelius's atlases. At 161 engraved maps it is among the largest of Ortelius's atlases, including many of the best Johannes Baptista Vrients plates that were published after Ortelius's death, and exceed the preceding Ortelius maps in their quality of engraving and rarity.

"The book was the largest ever printed and published in England up to that date, measuring at least an inch more that uncut copies of the Bishop's Bibles of 1568, 1572 and 1602, or the Genevan versions in black letter of 1578–83... No surviving copies are known to exist on the European continent [i.e. excluding copies in the British Isles]” (Wardington Catalogue).

The printing history is rather interesting too; the sheets of the entire edition had the copperplates for the maps struck on one side in Antwerp, most likely by the Plantin Press. The sheets were then sent to London, where the text on the reverse, and the additional pages bearing text only, were printed by Bradwood at the Eliot’s Court Press.

Context

The English Ortelius was published in 1606, during a fascinating and transformative period in the history of the British Isles. The English Renaissance was at its apex, and Elizabeth I's rule had just ended. Shakespeare was at the height of his career, just about to complete Macbeth. A new middle class was looking to patronize and consume English art, literature, and scholasticism. 

Politically, the ascension of Queen Elizabeth to the throne in 1558 marked the beginning of one of the great eras in British history. After the tumultuous rules of Henry VIII and Queen Mary, the Elizabethan era was marked by relative calm and military success. This allowed for the arts to prosper in Britain, and for the first time in modern history, the perceived height of culture in Britain rivaled that of the Continent. After Elizabeth's death, the rise of English art would continue under the rule of James I, who was himself a learned scholar.

Much like the Renaissance itself, the appearance of works printed in the vernacular was an Italian import. While fiction had been written in Romance and Germanic languages since the 14th century, Latin persisted as the lingua franca of religion and scholarly works. This transition away from Latin had many different causes, including the growing middle class, the rise of Protestantism, and nationalistic tendencies. At the time this work was printed, scholarly use of the vernacular was just starting to be accepted. The King James Bible had been commissioned two years prior to the creation of this work, though there were previous (all illicit to some degree, with few in circulation) English-language Bibles. This edition of Ortelius's work was a prominent early example of a key scholarly text being published in English.

Works such as Ortelius's would have been targeted at a new moneyed middle class, many of whom were not particularly strong in Latin. These consumers were eager for new works on science, history, and geography, but works of interest were of limited availability to them. Ortelius's atlas exploited this gap in the market and helped to further educate this rising bourgeoisie. They, in turn, demanded new and exotic works of art that could satisfy the curiosity that the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum had instilled in them.

As an example of how common and important atlases like these were, the Shakespeare trust comments on the miniature English Ortelius atlas "Pocket versions of this atlas were popular, so there's every chance that Shakespeare owned one!"

Rarity

Van Den Broecke says that 300 copies of the English Ortelius were printed. A large number of these will have been destroyed or broken, and others are now in institutional collections. The most recent auction records are in 2008 for $158,500 for a disbound copy at Sotheby's, and in 2006 for £102,000 (approximately $195,000) at the Wardington Sale, in 18th-century calf.

Provenance

Sir Sebastian Harvey (d.1621), English merchant, Sheriff of London from 1609-1610, and Lord Mayor of London in 1618, early seventeenth-century presentation inscription to title from Richard Wright to Sebastian Harvey, "Clarissimo viro Sebastiano Harvey vicecomiti Londinensi dignissimo; Richardus Wright humilleme D.D." (Sir John Jolles, Sheriff of London from 1605 to 1606, and Lord Mayor of London in 1615, was married to Alice son of a Richard Wright, though we cannot establish a connection beyond that).

We note also aseventeenth-century inscription to title, with the name George Lyle  Colonell.  This would seem almost certainly to be Sir George Lisle (died 1648), a Royalist and Colonel in the King's Army.  His father Lawrence Lisle was a London publisher and bookseller, trading at the sign of ‘The Tigers Head’ in St. Paul’s Churchyard.  An ardent Royalist, He was a leading figure in the English Civil War, who was one of the leaders of the Kent insurrection and was later executed by firing squad in 1648 following the Siege of Colchester.

The atlas include the bookplate of H. Bougoüin Sar.  This would appear almost certainly to be Bishop Henri-Louis-Prosper Bougouin, the Bishop of Periguex and Sarlat (1845 - 1915).  Bougouin was on the four stenographers at the First Vatican Council (1869-70).

Condition Description
Folio (483 x 323mm.), contemporary calf, spine gilt in 8 compartments, both covers with ruled border, foliate corner pieces and central gilt tool, few marginal repairs, maps and text re-guarded throughout, the two supplied maps slightly smaller, re-cased. Engraved architectural title with the arms of James I on verso, dedication with the engraved epitaph to Ortelius on verso, full-page portrait of Ortelius within cartouche, separate engraved title to the Parergon (discreet repair to title), small engraving of a globe printed upside down on verso of colophon leaf, 161 engraved double-page maps (2 maps supplied from a Latin text edition, "Pedemontanae" and "Thvsciae"), some numbered in manuscript, new endpapers.
Reference
ESTC S122301; Koeman III, Ort 37; STC 18855; van der Krogt, 31:551
Abraham Ortelius Biography

Abraham Ortelius is perhaps the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers. Ortelius started his career as a map colorist. In 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. His early career was as a business man, and most of his journeys before 1560, were for commercial purposes. In 1560, while traveling with Gerard Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards a career as a scientific geographer. From that point forward, he devoted himself to the compilation of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), which would become the first modern atlas.

In 1564 he completed his “mappemonde", an eight-sheet map of the world. The only extant copy of this great map is in the library of the University of Basel. Ortelius also published a map of Egypt in 1565, a plan of Brittenburg Castle on the coast of the Netherlands, and a map of Asia, prior to 1570.

On May 20, 1570, Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum first appeared in an edition of 70 maps. By the time of his death in 1598, a total of 25 editions were published including editions in Latin, Italian, German, French, and Dutch. Later editions would also be issued in Spanish and English by Ortelius’ successors, Vrients and Plantin, the former adding a number of maps to the atlas, the final edition of which was issued in 1612. Most of the maps in Ortelius' Theatrum were drawn from the works of a number of other mapmakers from around the world; a list of 87 authors is given by Ortelius himself

In 1573, Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title of Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism). In 1578 he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography with his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin press at Antwerp and republished as Thesaurus geographicus in 1596). In 1584 he issued his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, a Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred and secular). Late in life, he also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table (1598).