Description
Ralph Vere Tooley, Charles Bricker and Gerald Roe Crone.
Hardback with dust-jacket. 16 x 11 1/4" - 400 x 85mm; 276 pages. Originally published by Phaidon, Oxford, 1968; this edition, 1976.
Dust-jacket showing some signs of wear, clipped, a little dog-eared at the edges and mended at top of spine; previous owner's label attached to rear at bottom left, otherwise good: the text is without any marks or notes; the binding tight. Profusely and lavishly illustrated throughout, many in colour and with several fold-outs.
FROM THE JACKET: An Illustrated Survey of Maps and Mapmakers over 2,00O years of cartography are covered in this fascinating book, from Eskimo bone-carvings imaginative elaborations springing undisciplined from their arctic wanderings to modern, precisely scientific, statistical maps. As the story unfolds we see what we now owe to the men of previous ages who laboriously assembled the puzzle of the earth's shape, piece by piece.
Many dangerous voyages of exploration were needed to achieve our present knowledge. The resources and techniques of mapmakers have changed considerably through the ages. A variety of political, economic, and religious developments have over the centuries influenced the growing art of cartography and man has several times had to change his basic views about the image of his world. In short, the study of cartography provides an unusual and fascinating perspective of the world's history.
After an introductory chapter which sketches the development of cartography, the reader will find described, chronologically. In separate chapters, the exploration and mapping of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and finally, the last continent to be discovered, Australia. As Gerald Roe Crone writes in his preface: I can think of no existing book of maps which comprehends all the continents in this way'.
The text is supported by more than 350 illustrations, among them reproductions of maps discussed, portraits of explorers and cartographers, title pages and frontispieces from important contemporary Publications, and many more. In addition, the book presents the reader with ten fold-out maps in facsimile, printed in six colours, four fold-out maps printed in twO colours, and six illustrations in four colours.
A detailed index facilitates reference. A bibliography refers the reader to farther valuable sources in the history of mapmaking. LANDMARKS OF MAPMAKING will interest not only the lover of old maps but anyone with an interest in history, who will find this book to be a rich and original source of information.
