Atlas

Amsterdam: Frederick de Wit, [ca 1680]. Folio (20 4/8 x 12 4/8 inches). Engraved allegorical title-page with letterpress index on verso (re-margined at an early date) and 28 double-page maps, including two folding, all in contemporary hand colour. Bound in contemporary gilt-panelled calf Cover. Worn at extremities and repaired at the head of the spine. Several maps with early repairs to versos at folds. 19th-century North Library bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield on the front paste-down dated 1860, discreet blind-stamp on the title-page and world map. An early atlas with maps relating to America including the double-hemisphere world map "Nova Orbis Tabula" with two smaller hemispheres in the cusps and an elaborate allegorical border showing the four seasons and the zodiac, California as an island, and the western and northern coastline of Australia is emerging; "Novissima et Accuratissima totius Americae" of North and South America shows California as an island; "Asiae" and "Tabula Indiae" both depict the northern coastline of Australia. De Wit (1629-1706) was born in Gouda and became one of the most famous engravers of maps of the second half of the 17th-century. His earliest maps were issued in 1654. In addition to being geographically correct, de Wit's maps are full of detail and are often decorated with elaborate cartouches. "Frederick de Wit, who was the sole proprietor of the firm, was not just a conveyor of maps but also an innovator in the field of commercial cartography. His maps and in particular his atlas production changed the form in which atlases were consumed in the second half of the seventeenth century. de Wit produced and successfully marketed the first concise reference atlas. de Wit's cartographic production is one of the key factors that joined the early Netherlands period in cartography ca 1550 to ca. 1675, to the latter years of Dutch commercial cartography, and European atlas production in the eighteenth century" (George Carhart). Koeman III, Wit 4.…