Geographiae Blavianae Volumen Quintum, Quo Anglia, Quae Est Europae Liber Undecimus, Continetur

Key Properties

Edition: Latin edition of the Atlas Maior (Geographia Blaviana), volume V: England and Wales, Amsterdam, Joan Blaeu, 1662

Titles (two): letterpress volume title 'Geographiae Blavianae volumen quintum, quo Anglia, quae est Europae liber undecimus, continetur', Amsterdam 1662, with Blaeu's armillary-sphere device 'Indefessus agendo' in colour; engraved architectural title (Britannus, Romanus, Saxo, Danus, Normannus) with the letterpress title 'Anglia, quae est Europae liber XI' and the imprint dated 1648, coloured and heightened in gold

Text: in the 1648 setting, with the mispagination of pp. 355-394 (Van der Krogt 2:302); the corrected setting of 1662 runs to p. 400 (2:303)

Illustration: 58 engraved maps (57 double-page; the map of the Isle of Man printed in the text) (including Wales and regional maps), all fully hand-coloured and mounted on guards; coloured woodcut and engraved illustrations in the text

Collation: complete, collated leaf by leaf against Van der Krogt 2:302 (58 maps)

Format: tall folio

Binding: original publisher's vellum gilt

Collation & Technical Description

Two title-pages: letterpress title dated 1662 with coloured printer's device; engraved title with imprint dated 1648, coloured and heightened in gold; text in the 1648 setting, pp. 1-360, 355-394 (Van der Krogt 2:302); 58 engraved maps (57 double-page; the map of the Isle of Man printed in the text), fully hand-coloured and mounted on guards. Complete: collated leaf by leaf against Van der Krogt (November 2026).

Condition

Lightly discoloured or browned in places. Original publisher's vellum gilt, light wear, covers slightly bowed.

References & Bibliography

Van der Krogt, Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, vol. II, 2:601.5 (Atlas Maior, Latin, vol. V); cf. 2:303 (titles) and 2:302 (1648 text setting, including copies issued as 2:601.5).

Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, Bl 56.

Skelton, County Atlases of the British Isles 1579-1703, 71 (as cited by Van der Krogt; the auction description cites no. 73).

Description

Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior is the summit of Dutch Golden Age cartography and the largest and most expensive book published in the seventeenth century. Issued from 1662 in Latin as the Geographia Blaviana in eleven volumes, and later in French, Dutch, Spanish and German, it brought together nearly six hundred maps in a uniform, lavish style, sold coloured by the finest Amsterdam colourists and bound in gilt vellum for princes, statesmen and wealthy merchants.

This is the fifth volume, devoted entirely to England and Wales, Europae liber undecimus. Its maps of the English and Welsh counties, built largely on the surveys of John Speed and engraved anew by the Blaeu workshop, are among the most decorative ever made of Britain, with their coats of arms, cartouches and figures. The accompanying text draws on William Camden's Britannia. Here the volume survives as issued, with both its title-pages, the letterpress volume title of 1662 with Blaeu's printer's device in colour and the engraved title in colour and gold, the maps in full contemporary colour, and the original publisher's gilt vellum binding.

The copy also shows how the Atlas Maior was put together. The England volume grew out of the fourth part of Blaeu's Atlas Novus, first published in 1645-1646 and reissued with a newly set text in 1648. When Joan Blaeu launched the Atlas Maior in 1662, he gave this volume a new letterpress title, Geographiae Blavianae volumen quintum, dated 1662, but combined it with the engraved title of 1648 and with text sheets still in stock from the 1648 printing. These can be recognised by an error in the page numbering, which jumps back from page 360 to 355 and ends at page 394; in the text reset in 1662 the error is corrected and the volume runs to page 400. Van der Krogt records copies of the Atlas Maior made up in this way. They show the Blaeu firm drawing on its existing stock as it assembled the eleven volumes of the largest publishing project of the age.

Historical Significance

The England volume of the greatest atlas of the seventeenth century, complete in contemporary colour and in its original Blaeu binding.