British Town Maps

Towns are complex and sophisticated creations. Mapping towns stretched cartographers' ingenuity to new heights of both artistic beauty and scientific exactitude as they strove to represent and communicate the physical patterns of streets, buildings, and spaces; the "above ground" and the "below ground;" the built structures and the economy; the lives of those who live or work there; and the unseen realities of land ownership, administration, religion, and politics.These maps served a variety of purposes, from guiding travelers, assisting with administration and government, raising taxes, planning the built environment, organizing its defense--and much, much more. Some of the maps in this book are well known, others have languished in obscurity, deep in archives, until revealed by the 10 years' work of a British Academy research project on which this book is founded. Lavishly illustrated in color, it tells the story of the mapping of urban Britain from the late middle ages until modern times. The text is accompanied by a comprehensive index of town maps which have been cataloged on an open-access electronic resource.

Great Britain and Ireland enjoy a rich cartographic heritage, yet historians have not made full use of early maps in their writings and research. This is partly due to a lack of information about exactly which maps are available. With the publication of this volume from the Royal Historical Society, we now have a comprehensive guide to the early maps of Great Britain. The book is divided into two parts: part one describes the history and purpose of maps in a series of short essays on the early mapping of the British Isles; part two comprises a guide to the collections, national and regional. Now available from Cambridge University Press, this volume provides an essential reference tool for anyone requiring to access maps of the British Isles dating back to the medieval period and beyond.

The First Mapping of America tells the story of the General Survey. At the heart of the story lie the remarkable maps and the men who made them - the commanding and highly professional Samuel Holland, Surveyor-General in the North, and the brilliant but mercurial William Gerard De Brahm, Surveyor-General in the South. Battling both physical and political obstacles, Holland and De Brahm sought to establish their place in the firmament of the British hierarchy. Yet the reality in which they had to operate was largely controlled from afar, by Crown administrators in London and the colonies and by wealthy speculators, whose approval or opposition could make or break the best laid plans as they sought to use the Survey for their own ends.

This is an introductory volume on the history of English maps. The authors adopt the revisionist perspectives of the new history of cartography, and review a broad range of maps, ranging in date from about 700 AD to the beginning of the 20th century. Their principle objective is to explore the ways in which maps have interacted with society in England's past, to analyze the roles that maps have played and the uses to which they have been put.