This month’s blog post is written by Holly Phillips, a University of Birmingham student who carried out a work placement at the museum as part of her studies in English Literature.
Antique Atlases
Nicolaes Visscher’s 1649 Typus Orbis Terrarum, better known as simply Visscher’s atlas, is one of the museum’s oldest collection items. Followed by John Speed’s England Wales Scotland in 1666, the pair of atlases offer insight to historical perspectives of the world and travel in the 17th century. Due to their small size, they are considered “pocket” atlases. Intricately designed, Visscher and Speed demonstrate the artistic side of cartography now far less common. However, they remain practical in both the usability of their maps and what they can tell us about the history of atlases.
Practical Use
Atlases such as these two examples were typically for show as opposed to being used when travelling. However, various details on these 17th century atlases do indicate their practical use. Like we would see on maps today, scales indicate the real-world translations of distance. The drawings of mountains and animals, also, are not to be underestimated. These are informative of the area’s terrain and possible wildlife. Where mythical creatures are incorporated, this may indicate the fear of the unknown. Alternatively, mythical creatures may point to the cartographer’s desire for its reader to better educate themselves on the mapped area, therefore find out about the real creatures lurking there.
In Speed’s atlas, extensive text describing each county is provided following each detailed and elegant map. As well as explaining the landscape’s structure, Speed’s notes about air quality are informative to both a health-conscious contemporary reader and a climate-conscious current reader. Speed also offers commentary on the religious tendencies of the countries and counties as well as explaining their economic statuses. At the time, this information would have been difficult to access without thorough research.
Living Vicariously
While these examples of particularly distinguished examples of pocket atlases were likely owned by members of a higher class of society, pocket atlases were actually created to ‘meet the needs of the citizens of [the] lowest income’ [1]. The unfeasibility of travel for many during this time could be satiated with the intriguing illustrations and enchanting descriptions found in pocket atlases. Even decades later, the success of travel journals such as Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland continued to indicate this desire to live vicariously through other travellers. This copy of Visscher’s atlas was originally owned by Johnson himself. The pages with his own numbers, notes, and an index, suggest he often looked at the book and likely empathised with this desire to explore more of the world.
Visscher’s atlas would have been many decades old before it came to Johnson. When it was first bought, the purchase may have been more complicated than we might anticipate based on our experience of book buying today. Some atlases were sold with binding on demand, meaning that ‘the customer was king’ and able to choose which sheets and texts they wanted included in their own special editions of endless variety [2]. While these would certainly be a nightmare scenario for a book cataloguer now, the flexibility of these creations speaks to their impressive multipurpose nature that too often goes underappreciated.
1. Dorothy Prescott, A Little Master’s Piece. (Visscher Typus Orbis Terrarum). P.31. [https://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-79/t1-g-t4.html]
2. Jan Smits and Todd Fell, Early Printed Atlases: Shaping Plato’s “Forms” into Bibliographic Descriptions. P.186. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15420353.2011.566840]
You can find out more about the earliest books in the Birthplace Museum collection on the British Library’s ‘English Short Title Catalogue’ at http://estc.bl.uk/ . To see our holdings choose ‘Search the ETSC’, ‘Browse Libraries’ and search for ‘The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum’. More records are being added regularly.
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum Blog 