BLAIR (John).

The Chronology and History of the World, from the Creation to the Year of Christ, 1779, Illustrated in LVI Tables ... [second title:] Fourteen Maps of Ancient and Modern Geography, for the Illustration of the Tables of Chronology and History. To which is

Folio; engraved title-page with vignette; engraved dedication leaf; [14], 20, [36] pp., sixteen maps (the text calls for fourteen, there are two additional maps: the world (1779) and East Indies (1773)), fifty-six engraved tables mostly doublepage; includes: ‘Fourteen maps of ancient and modern geography …’ with a separate title-page, dated 1768, pagination, and register. Contemporary tree calf; rebacked and repaired. London, [Thomas Cadell sr.], 1779.

£2,000.00

Blair first published The Chronology and History of the World in 1754; for the 1768 edition he added maps. noting in the Preface, “… It was in Compliance with his Royal Highness’s Desire that I have endeavoured to improve these Tables of Chronology, by adding fourteen Maps, part of them containing the antient and part of them the modern Geography, which are so disposed in different Places of the Tables, as to illustrate the Times and Periods when the Countries delineated in each Map were the principal Scenes of Action. … A few of the Maps have been copied from M. Delisle and M. Robert, but by much the greatest Number of them were drawn under the Author’s immediate inspection by M. De Larochette [Louis de la Rochette], from the latest and most accurate Discoveries and Observations. And that the Errors in other Maps, and the Times when they were rectified, might be the easier traced and known, a Dissertation is prefixed to the whole on the Rise and Progress of Geography …”.

To the original suite of fourteen maps, in 1773 the map of the East Indies was added; the world map is new to this edition.

Reference: ESTC T135882 records five complete institutional copies in the British Isles and four in America; not in the BL.

Stock No.
223222