Second edition “enlarged with above thirty sheets more in description, and about twenty new maps”, of Morden’s celebrated first atlas, first published in 1680 with 62 maps. This new edition includes a map of ‘Armenia’ not called for in the ‘Catalogue’, and the supplemental map and description of ‘Bermudas’ after page 544, a cancel.

The Maps
Including a general map of America (Burden’s third state) showing California as an island and a further fifteen regional maps of the Americas: ‘Magellanica’; ‘Chili’; ‘Brasil’; ‘Amazone’; ‘The Western Islands’; ‘Jamaica’; ‘Barbados’; ‘New Spain’; ‘New Mexico’; ‘Florida’; ‘Carolina’; ‘Virginia and Maryland’; ‘Pensilvania, and New Jersey’; ‘New England, and New York’; ‘Northwest part of America’. The world map in two hemispheres appeared also in Patrick Gordon’s ‘Geography Anatomised’ (1693, 1699, 1700 and 1702 editions) and Morden’s ‘Atlas Terrestris’ (c1700).

Robert Morden (c1650-1703) was a leading English mapmaker from the last quarter of the eighteenth century; his place and date of birth are not known, but it is thought he came from the north of England, perhaps the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was probably apprenticed to Joseph Moxon, an engraver, mapmaker, globe-maker and instrument-maker, and Morden developed the same skills. Morden was always plagued by lack of money; many of his most important maps were published in partnership with others, but the market for maps in England at this time was too small to sustain the number of mapmakers; Morden was to complain of his having “lain latent under the horizon of unknown obscurity, and irresistible poverty”.

‘Geography Rectified’, a popular pocket-sized geographical text with maps, was one of Morden’s most successful works.