John Speed (1551 or 1552 - 1629)
Map of Cambridgeshire
Engraving with later hand colouring
39 x 53 cm
A beautifully coloured map of Cambridgeshire, with an antique description of the county to the reverse. The map, along with many others, was published in Speed's atlas, 'The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine', first published in 1611. The map is populated by four figures in academic dress, and bordered on all sides by college crests.
John Speed was an English cartographer, chronologer and historian. The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London, he rose from his family occupation to accept the task of drawing together and revising the histories, topographies and maps of the Kingdoms of Great Britain as an exposition of the union of their monarchies in the person of King James I and VI. He accomplished this with remarkable success, with the support and assistance of the leading antiquarian scholars of his generation. He drew upon and improved the shire maps of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and others, being the first to incorporate the hundred-boundaries into them, and he was the surveyor and originator of many of the town or city plans inset within them. His work helped to define early modern concepts of British national identity. His Biblical genealogies were also formally associated with the first edition of the King James Bible. He is among the most famous of English mapmakers.
Condition: generally very good; one tiny hole to right side just beyond plate mark.
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