Anglia (Enghelandt, England)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Anglia', title in a cartouche lower right, with a scale of English miles

Position: p. 43 (signature C6), headed 'Enghelandt'

Text: verso p. 44, the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Enghelandt

Format: Copperplate engraving on a leaf of the oblong octavo atlas

Colouring: Uncoloured

Collation & Technical Description

One leaf from the Caert-Thresoor: the map on p. 43 (C6), headed 'Enghelandt', and on the verso, p. 44, the opening of the Dutch description of England. The map, engraved by Pieter van den Keere, shows England with its coastline and principal towns, the cartouche 'Anglia' lower right with a scale in English miles.

Condition

Corners on the right side slightly damaged; part of the lower margin missing. Slight discolouration at the upper left.

References & Bibliography

Van der Krogt, Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, III, 341:01 (the atlas). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, II, p. 254, Lan 1. Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, VII, 16.1. Burger, Het Caert-Thresoor (1930). King, Miniature Antique Maps (1996).

Description

Pieter van den Keere's small map of England from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the opening of the Dutch description on the verso.

Van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius), a Ghent refugee, had worked in London in the 1580s and early 1590s alongside his brother-in-law Jodocus Hondius, and his maps of the British Isles draw on that experience.

The Caert-Thresoor was the first Dutch pocket atlas: small copperplate maps by Pieter van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius) and Jodocus Hondius, each with a description of the country in Dutch, in an oblong octavo meant to be cheaper and handier than the great folio atlases of Ortelius and Mercator. It appeared in 1598, a year after the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies had returned, and it brought the geography of the whole known world within reach of a wider public. The plates proved durable: Petrus Bertius reused them for the Latin Tabularum geographicarum contractarum from 1600 and a French edition followed in 1602, so that the Dutch text of 1598 is the first and earliest form in which these maps were issued.

Historical Significance

England was the Dutch Republic's ally against Spain, bound by the Treaty of Nonsuch of 1585; maps of England are among the most sought-after plates of the Caert-Thresoor.

Provenance

Available on request.