Antique Map of Europe, Black's General Atlas, Edinburgh, 1870

About this sheet

An antique map of Europe, engraved on steel for Black's General Atlas of the World and published in Edinburgh by A. and C. Black in 1870. The sheet covers the whole of the continent from Iceland and the Atlantic coasts to the Ural frontier of European Russia, and from the North Cape down to the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Ottoman lands of the Balkan peninsula. A general map of Europe drawn in 1870 records the continent at a moment of real consequence, with Italy newly unified, the German states not yet gathered into an empire, and the Austro-Hungarian and Russian monarchies still holding the centre and the east. The political boundaries are laid down in original hand colour, with the rivers, mountain systems and principal cities engraved in the clear line for which the Edinburgh plates are valued. An antique map of Europe of this period is among the most useful of all atlas sheets for a collector, and the large format carries well in a hall, a study or a dining room.

Black's General Atlas of the World was the standard British household atlas of the middle nineteenth century, issued in Edinburgh by the publishing house of Adam and Charles Black, the firm better known to most readers as the publisher of Sir Walter Scott and of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its maps were engraved on steel, most of them under the direction of the Edinburgh cartographer John Bartholomew, whose clear lettering and restrained hill shading gave the atlas a legibility that its heavier rivals lacked. Successive issues were revised as boundaries moved and railways spread, so a sheet from Black's records the world as an educated Victorian reader understood it in the year the plate was printed.

Sheets from this atlas are sought after today both as reference cartography and as decorative material, the generous folio format suiting a wall quite as readily as a portfolio. Hung as a pair or a group, the plates make a handsome and genuinely informative wall.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with the centre fold as issued, light toning and a few small spots confined to the margins; the image itself is clean and bright.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.