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First Edition of Bowen's Augmentation of Ogilby.

Fine example of Bowen's description of England, based on John Ogilby's important survey of the British Isles.

Bowen's work is a fine compendium of maps, text, and specially designed "strip maps" that show the results of Ogilby's surveys of the roads of Britain. Ogilby's survey was the first such survey to focus on roads in the British Isles and was the survey responsible for replacing the 2,428-yard British mile wit the 1,760-yard statute mile.

The book includes county maps of each of England's various counties, which were added by Bownen for this edition. The aforementioned strip maps show, over the course of several pages, the cities, towns, cross-roads, and landmarks that a traveler would pass through on his way from one town to the next. These are augmented by extensive text descriptions of the local history, customs, and traditions.

The English strip maps of the late 17th and early 18th centuries are among the most interesting and recognizable maps available to map collectors. The distinctive scroll style was a graphic innovation for printed cartography that enabled easy reading of routes between major cities, dispensing with the extraneous information found in two-dimensional maps. While it took a while for this form of cartography to take off in print, it is among the oldest known forms of mapping. The only surviving Roman world map, the Peutinger Table, can be considered as a sort of strip map.

This is the first edition of Bowen's work, printed in 1720 and with Bowen's address given as "next ye King of Spain in s: Katherines." Emmanual Bowles decided to publish this update to Ogilby's road maps in a reduced-size edition at the same time as John Senex and Thomas Gardner decided to also publish reduced editions. In order to best his rivals, Bowles had Bowen engrave county maps to accompany the strip maps, something not present in the other editions.

Collation

[Title]; [4]; 1-273.