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Broadsheets (22 x 17 4/8 inches). Letterpress table of maps tipped-in to front free endpaper, "Avertissement" leaf and 17 leaves of descriptive text, 3 leaves of subscriber's names. Engraved allegorical title-page by Charles Baquoy after J. Oger, and 108 fine double-page engraved maps, including 3 folding maps, all hand-colored in outline in a contemporary hand and mounted on guards. Contemporary French mottled calf, the spine gilt decorated in eight compartments with seven raised bands, red morocco lettering-piece in one (extremities scuffed, short split to front joint). Provenance: Ink library stamp of R.P. Knight on the front free endpaper; with the small library label of Wolfgang A. Herz, on the front pastedown, his sale "Important Voyages and Travels", 9th December 2009, lot 38. A VERY FINE LARGE-PAPER COPY of Vaugondy's principal atlas, first published in 1752, and issued by subscription in a total edition of 1,118 copies. The first twelve maps in this atlas are of the ancient world; of those of the new world, the last seven relate to the Americas: "Amerique Septentrionale", "Canada" (based on records held by the Depot de la Marine), "Colonies Angloises en Amerique", "Virginie, Mariland, & Pensilvanie" (based on the map by Fry and Jefferson), "Amerique Meridionale", "Les Grandes & petites Antilles", "Iles Saint-Domingue & la Martinique." In addition to the 103 geographical maps listed there are five maps of post roads of: the British Isles, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal and Italy. The Robert de Vaugondy family of mapmakers were preeminent in the eighteenth century, at a time when the French were at the forefront of cartography. Gilles Robert de Vaugondy was a descendent of the family of the great seventeenth-century French cartographer Nicolas Sanson. Sanson had initiated the so-called "French school of cartography," which was unprecedented in its attention to precision and scientific detail, and which discarded much of the decorative embellishments of previous maps as being irrelevant. From Sanson's time in the second half of the seventeenth century until the latter part of the eighteenth century, with the activity of the Robert de Vaugondy family, French geographical conceptions were more influential than those of any other nation. Gilles Robert de Vaugondy inherited the firm of his uncle, Pierre Moullart-Sanson, in 1730. He enlarged the stock of his family company when he purchased the estate of another acclaimed cartographer, Hubert Jaillot. He and other family members combined much of the inherited cartographic material with their own innovations, as well as those of the most advanced American mapmakers, to publish a series of beautifully produced atlases at mid-century. Gilles and his son, Didier, were the most celebrated members of the cartography dynasty, both honored with the title of Geographer to the King, Gilles in 1730 and Didier in 1760. For an extensive study of Robert de Vaugondy, see Mary Pedley, Bel et Utile: the Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers, Tring, 1992. Nordenskjold 245; NMM 266; Phillips Atlases 619; Sabin 71863. Catalogued by Kate Hunter.
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