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Description

Detailed set of antique maps of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Haiti together on one sheet, produced by John Thomson in Edinburgh in 1815.

Each map includes remarkable detail, especially for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, which show substantially more details than normally appear on early-19th-century commercial atlas maps.

Condition Description
Original hand-color. Minor damstain in the lower blank margin. Trimmed to the top of the engraved title a the top of the sheet.
John Thomson Biography

John Thomson (1777-ca. 1840) was a commercial map publisher active in Edinburgh. He specialized in guide books and atlases and is primarily known for his Atlas of Scotland (1832) and the New General Atlas, first published in 1817 and reissued for the next quarter century. The New General Atlas was a commercial success—it was also published in Dublin and London—and it compiled existing geographic knowledge in compelling ways for a wide audience.

His Atlas of Scotland introduced new geographic information and was the first large-scale atlas of Scotland to be organized by county. It provided the most-accurate view of Scotland available before the Clearances. Work on the atlas began in 1820 and led to Thomson’s bankruptcy in 1830 due to the high costs of gathering the latest surveys and reviewing the required materials. Despite the publication of the atlas, Thomson declared bankruptcy again in 1835.