Engraved Title Page: West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies. / Jefferys, Thomas / 1788

Engraved Title Page: West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies. Jefferys, Thomas, 1788

Engraved Title Page: West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies. / Jefferys, Thomas / 1788

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Full Title: (Engraved title page to) The West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies: illustrated with forty one correct charts and maps, taken From actual surveys. Together with an historical account of the several countries and islands which compose that part of the world. By the late Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to the King. London: Printed for Robert Sayer and John Bennett, Map, Chart, Print-Sellers, and Globe Makers, Fleet-Street, M,DCC,LXXXIII.

Author: Jefferys, Thomas

Date: 1788

Short Title: Engraved Title Page: West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies.

Note: This is a superb atlas of the West Indies and a companion atlas to Jeffery's American Atlas also first issued in 1775. The latest date on the charts in this copy is 1788 (The Cape Verd Islands). There is a beautifully illustrated title page that precedes the main title page, which reads "The West Indian Atlas..." Jefferys died in 1771; Sayer and Bennet acquired his materials in preparation for this atlas, and published the atlas posthumously under his name (as they did with the American Atlas) in 1775. The heart of this atlas and the most detailed part is the sixteen sheet large chart and index sheet of the whole of the West Indies. The rest of the atlas consists of charts of the Atlantic Islands and the British Channel, as well as individual maps and charts of seventeen islands in the West Indies. Twenty seven pages of text gives the sources for the maps and charts, and a historical account of the West Indies. Three of the large chart maps also appeared in the American Atlas. Comparing the two Florida sheets in this atlas to the same sheets in the 1775 American Atlas, numerous changes to the coast lines and other features appear. That would indicate that Sayer updated the charts as the atlas was reissued - Phillips shows issues of 1775, 1781, 1787, 1794, 1796, 1807, and 1818. With the 1794 and later editions, 20 maps are added of various additional islands. Sayer and Bennet also published in 1775 a smaller version of this atlas called "The West India Islands: From Actual Survey and Observations..." that consisted of the same text, a general chart of the Islands, and the same sixteen or seventeen (depending on the edition) charts of the islands that appear in the larger version (P3942). Finally, Jefferys himself published in 1762 "A Description of the Spanish Islands and Settlements on the Coast of the West Indies" which was issued in quarto, with a general chart and 32 maps and plans of harbors and towns (P3941).

Published In: The West-India atlas: or, a compendious description of the West-Indies: illustrated with forty one correct charts and maps, taken From actual surveys. Together with an historical account of the several countries and islands which compose that part of the world.

Publication Reference: cf NMM 360 (1775 edition), 366 (1796 edition); P2701 (1787 edition).

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