A CARTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY of the MAPS in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH and AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY BOOKS BARBARA BACKUS Mccorkle
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A CARTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE MAPS in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY BOOKS BARBARA BACKUS McCORKLE ISBN 978‐1‐936153‐02‐2 http://hdl.handle.net/1808/5564 Copyright ©2009 Barbara Backus McCorkle This electronic edition created by Digital Publishing Services, an initiative of the University of Kansas Libraries Creative Commons License Deed Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported You are free: • to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: • Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.) • Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. • No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. With the understanding that: • Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. • Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: o Your fair dealing or fair use rights; o The author's moral rights; o Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. • Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page. 5 PREFACE This study of eighteenth-century geography books published in the British Isles and United States began some years ago when I was an associate rare book librarian at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. The Library had an extensive collection of 18th-century English books which included some editions of the Guthrie and Salmon geographies. In my naivete I began searching for a bibliography of such works as a cataloguing aid, as I was particularly interested in the maps they contained. When it finally dawned on me that none existed, the germ of the current project took hold. Someday, I would write it. At that time I had no conception of the scope of the research, nor the time it would consume. It simply seemed to cry out to be done, and looked to be a straightforward task. I stored the idea away but took no action until some years later, when I was working as a reference librarian in the library of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. That library had no separate map collection and virtually no pre-1900 maps, a frustration for me. Casting about for a spare-time project which would keep me involved in the map world, the old idea surfaced. At about that time, in a lovely bit of serendipity, the Lilly Library of Indiana University, in Bloomington, offered one-week fellowships to Indiana librarians who could come up with a fitting project. I leapt at it, submitted a proposal, it was accepted, and I spent a fruitful week immersed in that wonderful library, setting the scope and devising a methodology. The project as outlined has varied little in the years since. As it now stands, it includes any book with maps (other than atlases, which have been well studied) concerned with the geography of the world or a major portion thereof (i.e. no geographies of single countries), published 1700-1800 in the British Isles or North America. The scope embraces geographies, gazetteers, geographical dictionaries, historical geographies, and larger works containing separate sections on geography. The journey from that week in the Lilly Library in 1977 to the present publication has been at times tedious and frustrating but mostly great fun. Since no bibliography of geographical works then existed1, let alone any guide to their maps, the first order of business was to compile a list of likely titles. In those distant, pre-Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (now titled the English Short Title Catalog, ESTC) days, that meant slogging through the card catalogues of many libraries, finding clues in subject headings and keeping on the trail of known authors. The arrival of the ESTC has been the single most helpful event in the completion of the finished list, and without it I would undoubtedly have missed many appropriate entries. Even with its help I am sure I have missed some; I hope not many. It seemed quite miraculous to be able to sit at a terminal, search under the single term "geograph#", and see title after unknown title pop up on the screen. With the excellent ESTC collations, which led me to books with maps and allowed me to avoid those without any, and the good title transcriptions, my list expanded. And as more and more libraries added their holdings, elusive volumes were located. Ninety-nine percent of the titles in this bibliography can now be found on the ESTC, and when present the ESTC number is given for each entry, rather than noting the libraries in which I examined the item. The ESTC entry includes the symbols for all reporting libraries and usually gives the call number of the item at each institution. This last has saved me hours of work. I decided at the outset that seeing only one copy of a book would not be sufficient. Some volumes had lists of maps to be included; some didn’t. Therefore it seemed important to examine several copies of a work to be sure that the corpus of maps was standard. As a result, I have tried to see at least three copies of every title/edition, and for the most part I was successful; I have examined more than 2,000 books. Even with the invaluable help of the ESTC it has not been possible to locate three copies of every title/edition. Some titles have been available in only two, or even one extant copy, and as a result my information for such items was limited. Some have not been located at all. Are they ghosts? Did an enterprising publisher bring out, for example, the 7th edition of a work, just to make it seem up-to-date, when no 6th edition had ever been issued? Or have the missing editions truly vanished? Gaps in the record are duly noted. Sadly, in every library I have found copies of a desired book which has had some or all of its maps removed. While many 18th century books are now in special collections, for too long many were on open shelves, making the books easy prey for thieves. Except for a handful of quartos and small folios, which I think of as 18th century coffee- table books, most of the books in this carto-bibliography were octavos or even duodecimos, designed for students and those members of the increasingly literate public interested in geography and history but not wealthy enough to purchase the larger, more expensive geographies and atlases. Many of the books were quite literally worn out from use, or became out-of-date and were discarded. When they turn up in antiquarian book stores or dealer’s catalogues they are rarely in fine condition. Even those copies which have found their way to the sanctuary of a library are often worn and dog-eared. This evidence of use leads me to believe that, small and unimpressive as they were, these geographies nevertheless shaped the geographical world vision of countless readers in the British Isles and the United States. Size alone, of course, is no indication of importance. A far better indication of that can be found in a look at the publication history of books of a geographical nature, which this study makes possible. In the first decade of the 18th century, eighteen books were published. By mid-century, the decade 1751-1760, the total had risen to 38. Numbers rose rapidly after that, culminating in 136 such titles 1791-1800, a nearly 500% jump, reflecting both an increase in interest in the subject as well as an increase in literacy. It is also instructive to examine the nature of the geographical books which were published, as reflecting the culture of the times. In this study of 470 titles/editions, three main areas of readership were identified. The earliest was for students of the classics, which in the 18th century were still the backbone of the educational curriculum. Six of the eighteen books published in the first decade were titles of this nature. New editions of such classical authors as Pomponius Mela and Dionysius Periegetes were published throughout the century, as were books titled, e.g. Geographia Classica, or Geographia Antiqua. Children were another major publishing target. Books with titles such as Geography Made Familiar and Easy, or Geography for Children went through as many as twenty editions. Other titles, as Geography for Youth, Youth’s General Introduction, or even The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Geography were meant to appeal to families with children out of the nursery but not yet in University. For the latter, the 20 editions of Patrick Gordon’s Geography Anatomiz’d, 23 editions of William Guthrie’s New Geographical . .Grammar and 25 editions of Thomas Salmon’s similarly titled text sufficed. A practical business man might satisfy reference needs with one of the gazetteers, which published geographical information in alphabetical format. For the affluent, handsome quarto and folio volumes were furnished with large, fold-out maps, elegantly engraved. The maps, of course, are the focus of this book, and examining them has led to some interesting speculation. Who controlled map plates? What was the trade in plates? Maps in Richard Turner’s View of the Earth .