Britannia, Volume the First: or, an illustration of the kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales: By a Geographical and Historical description of the Principal Roads thereof. Actually Admeasured and Delineated in a Century of Whole-Sheet Copper-Sculps. Accomodated With the Ichnography of the several Cities and Capital Towns; and completed By an Accurate Account of the more Remarkable Passages of Antiquity, Together with a Novel Discourse of the Present State. By John Ogilby Esq; His Majesty’s Cosmographer, and Master of His Majesty’s Revels in the Kingdom of Ireland
THE FIRST BRITISH ROAD ATLAS
FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE FATHER OF BRITISH MOTORING
London: the author, 1675. First edition, second issue.
Folio (15 7/8” x 10 7/8”, 403mm x 278mm): binder’s blank, π2(–π1) A-B2 C2(±C2) D-E2 H2 2A-Ddd2 χ2, binder’s blank [$1 signed; C2 signed “(*)”]. 115 leaves, pp. [26] (title in red-and-black, blank, 3pp. dedication, blank, 5pp. preface, 3pp. “Of the post-roads of England,” 8pp. “Of the City of London,” 4pp. catalogue of roads) 1-200, [4] (4pp. index). With 102 engraved plates: a title-page by Wenceslaus Hollar after Francis Barlow, a double-page map of Britain and 100 double-page strip-maps of roads.
Bound in contemporary blind-panelled calf (re-backed). On the spine, seven raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel, date gilt to the tail.
Re-backed. Scuffed, rubbed and worn, particularly to the fore-corners. Tanned, with some passages of foxing. An old tape repair to the front free end-paper, creased with some offsetting. A repaired pre-printing trimming-tear to pl. 8 (following p. 18). Plate 51 shaken, cropped at the left-hand edge. Plates 69 and 100 low impressions, with the plate just cropped at lower-right, affecting the plate-number but not the cartography. Filled loss to the upper fore-corners of pl. 96, outside the plate-mark. Plate 45 distended from the text-block, with some sanguine chalk in the margins. Armorial bookplate of Ditton Park to the front paste-down, with three campaigns of shelf-marks in sanguine ink below (“E-x.”, “G-x.”, “K-i.” with “E” and “G” struck through). A type-written note signed by Arthur Collis laid in.
John Ogilby (1600–1676) was a Scottish-born royalist — itself remarkable — who flourished in the years following the Restoration of the monarchy after the British Civil War. He was a translator and playwright, and planned the coronation of Charles II. For all that, however, the great monument of Ogilby (sometimes Ogelby or Ogilvy) is not his Iliad or Aeneid but the Britannia, the first road atlas of Britain, the surveying (the engraved title by Wenceslaus Hollar shows the use of the surveyor’s wheel, called the “waywiser” by Ogilby) having been undertaken at enormous expense. The strip map derives from the Roman itinerarium, the list of stops along a road, and is well-suited to translating long routes into the familiar rectangular aspect of a map; the one inch to one mile scale made the distances uniformly comprehensible. Ogilby enhances this with the motif of the ribbon, a jibe no doubt at Oliver Cromwell’s puritanical persecution of pompousness in dress.
Though projected to survey the whole of Britain (i.e., England, Wales and Scotland), Britannia ran to just one volume (of a presumed two). The present example is the second issue of the work, with the following points: the four-page description of London, the absence of the dedication to Gilbert Sheldon Archbishop of Canterbury (accounting for the jump from quire E to quire H) and a catchword of “132” at D1r. (Donald Hodson’s unpublished 2000 University of Exeter doctoral dissertation, The early printed road books and itineraries of England and Wales, lays out a much more nuanced archaeology of states.)
Ditton Park, between Heathrow airport and Slough, has long been held by the Montagu(e) family; the bookplate with the baron’s coronet above the Douglas-Montagu arms[1] was used by John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, second Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. Baron Montagu (1866–1929) was the great English evangelist of motoring (i.e., driving cars); the Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet mascot (hood ornament) of the Rolls Royce is based on the mistress of Baron Montagu, who is also said to have introduced King Edward VII to motoring. His son, the third baron (d. 2015) established the National Motor Museum in his father’s honor.
ESTC R483348.
[1] Argent per pale, dexter three fusils gules (Montagu), sinister a human heart gules imperially crowned or on a chief azure three mullets of the field (Douglas).
Item #JLR0778
Price: $27,500