I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted new material here.  I've been working on a few projects on the side, and time has just slipped by.  I should be posting some nice bird images soon as well. I bought this atlas a couple of years ago, and as the binding was falling apart they were very easy to scan.   I have decided that the atlas itself is not salvageable as at least one map seemed to be missing,  the binding was disintegrating, the spine was missing, and the covers had fallen off.  Thus, I am selling the maps individually in my bookstore, ZephyrusBooks.com, on this page HERE. There are about 100 maps in the book.  This atlas had maps of all the French Departments and overseas possessions of the time.  Every department of France at the time is represented on its own page, with political, demographic and other information on the reverse Vuillemin issued may version s of this atlas over the years, changing the border details, title decorations, fonts and the like over from edition to edition.   The size would also vary, and while not the larges examples, these are larger than many. Alexandre Vuillemin (1812-1880) ...

Here, unedited but for the straightening and cropping of the margins, are 14 map and chart images from the Library of Congress.   As with other LOC images, these are free and Public Domain.  I have converted them to JPEG format for easier access, as otherwise you would need to download them via special viewing software. These are from a 16 century book: "Portolan atlas of 9 charts and a world map, etc. Dedicated to Hieronymus Ruffault, Abbot of St. Vaast. (Agnese, Battista).  The notes state: Manuscript, pen-and-ink and watercolor, on vellum. I have no plans to edit or enhance these for posting here.  They could not be much improved by casual editing, so I will leave them as be.  They are available at full scale in the GALLERY. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Atlantic Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Turkey"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="182" caption="Compass Rose"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Armillary Sphere"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Black Sea "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Central Mediterranean with Italy, Sicily"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Frontis"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Indian Ocean "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Northern Europe "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Pacific Ocean"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Straits of Gibraltar with Northwest Africa and Spain "][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Western ...

I am in the process of scanning this entire atlas.   I acquired this very dilapidated 1883 edition of Cram's popular atlas, and while the binding was shot the pages were in fairly good condition.  I have looked on line and there are few good images available for free public access, so I decided I would post not only the maps and charts but the whole book as well.  Having an entire edition online will hopefully be of help as a reference that goes beyond the pleasures of simply seeing the maps and art. So far I have scanned the first 125 pages or so.   I am posting them in their entirety in THEIR OWN SUB-FOLDER of the atlas' primary folder.  I have not edited the maps yet so for the time being you will only see these full page images.  I have not re-oriented or retitled them, so maps may be sideways, and two-page maps appear in parts.  They do appear in order, though, and the numbers in the titles correspond to the page numbers. The maps and images are not that scarce, but remain collectible and are an affordable way for collectors and map enthusiasts to obtain a desirable, vintage 1800's ...

Collected from my own atlases and maps, others that have been shared with me, and from various online collections, these are available together in one album for ease of browsing and comparison, both here and at Alamy.  Most original scans are in TIFF or other archival format, and I have cleaned them up extensively and converted them for easy use into JPEG format. The images here on OBA are free and sufficient for most web purposes.  To license much larger images of these and/or similar world maps for editorial or other purposes go to:  www.alamy.com/lbx.asp?1087656 Each map image below leads to the OBA gallery page for that map.  The main OBA album is HERE. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200"] Oronce Fine, 1531, Noua, et Integra Uniuersi Orbis Descriptio[/caption] A very interesting double hemisphere with polar projections. Terra Australis dominates the south pole, while the Americas are very undefined. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200"] Fernando Bertelli, 1565, Universale Descrittione di Tutta la Terra Conosciuta Fin Qui[/caption] Two wind heads adorn the upper corners. The continental edges are jagged and undefined, and North America is shown as almost wholly contiguous with Asia. Sea monsters and ships roam the oceans. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="200"] Jodocus Hondius, 1595, Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticæ, With ...

This is a collection of images shared with me by the man who scanned them from various antique bibles and other old books, including:  Mathematical Astronomy by C.W.C. Barlow & G.H. Bryan (1893); Dawn of Astronomy by Sir Norman Lockyer (late 1800's); Baedeker's Palestine and Syria (1912); An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible, published by Henry Bill (1871); and The Holy Bible, published by John E. Potter and Company (late 1800's). Rather than being organized by the book they come from, they are roughly organized by subject. This is because they were given to me this way by the person who scanned them, William Struse, and I have kept his organization. The images are all public domain and he shared them with me with the understanding they would be offered for free here. He has only thumbnails on his site, and this was an easy way for him to share the larger images with a broader audience.  The maximum size of each image varies greatly.  I have edited them extensively to clean up the dirt and shadows and to darken, brighten, and otherwise enhance the lines.  A lot of text shows through from the obverse side of the leaves, but ...

It may seem rather monomaniacal to scan so many maps and battle plans, especially as they are not in and of themselves especially significant or noteworthy.  I like this old school atlas, though, and although they plates may be simplistic, I enjoy the quick overview of 1500 years of English history provided by the set as a whole. There is no text at all in this book other than a 2 page preface and a list of maps and plans.  The plates are printed single sided, so the quality is very good and there is no bleeding or show-through from other maps.  Flip through the pages, and you get a sense of the ebb and flow of English and British power and empire up until the end of the Victorian era. I have placed some representative images below, all linked to the GALLERY.  The full list is viewable there.   Complete title list is at bottom of this post. Title: A School Atlas of English History - A Companion Atlas to "The Student's History of England" Author: Samuel Rawson Gardiner, M.A., LL.D. Artist: unattributed Publisher: Longmans, Green, and CO. Date Published: 1892 Click a thumbnail to visit the gallery page for the image where it can be downloaded in ...

Maps? On a site about Old Book Art? Well, yes. Many maps, after all, even those you see framed and sold singly, have been removed from old atlases (either recently or hundreds of years ago). I have quite a few pre-1923 atlases and I have scanned a few of the smaller ones. (Those large folio, double folio and elephant folio atlases cannot be effectively scanned using the equipment I have.) I also own and have high quality images of hundreds of other old maps. Anyway, yes. My own appreciation of old books and their beauty started with atlases, and maps have been something I collect, albeit in a small amateurish manner, for almost my entire life. So, as I did not want to start a whole new website just for the maps that did not happen to be in an atlas, I thought I would add this category for both atlases as well as maps not from atlases. Some of the images are from other websites such as the Library of Congress. At first I was only going to post my own maps and scans, but upon consideration I decided to post others as well. There are ...

This was the first map I ever scanned and posted. It is one of f the first maps I ever acquired, sometime in the 1970's if I recall correctly. I forget what I paid for it, but it was not too expensive, and you can still pick up maps such as this for a fairly reasonable price. Again, my popular lament applies to maps such as this: why is it so hard to find good quality, high resolution images for free on the internet? Small maps such as this are easy to scan, and most are very well preserved even if they were removed from their atlases and separated for sale 200 years ago. I have often thought the answer must be some sort of proprietary selfishness. That does not make a huge amount of sense to me, although I do understand it. I have sold plenty of maps, and I do not think that people who are seeking an original will be deterred from paying if they can have a free facsimile instead. Collectors are collectors and want the real thing. Other people will probably not pay for an original anyway. Additionally, maps are such a great historic and artistic ...

Most Libraries have map collections of one sort or another. Some, such as the Library of Congress (LOC), have digitized such a vast number that it seems as though you could never browse through them all. The LOC is also so big as to be unwieldy at times, and they archive their images in an assortment of formats which are sometimes cumbersome to download and convert in to a more easily readable form. Smaller collections such as Michigan State University's are often more focussed, and when you are lucky they even offer good sized images. I say "smaller" when in fact, to quote their website: "The Map Library houses a collection of general and thematic maps and atlases for every area of the world. The collection consists of approximately 212,000 sheet maps, 14,000 folded geologic maps, and 4,000 atlases, gazetteers and other reference aids including wall maps, globes, CDs and Internet-accessible resources. The collection is especially strong in Michigan, United States, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, though all areas are collected at some level. Specialized collections include 19th-21st century Michigan county atlases and plat books; a small Braille map and atlas collection of U.S. states and ...

I bought this atlas by a mistake (sight unseen). The person selling it claimed it was an atlas from the mid 1800's by Louis-Etienne Dussieux, and I got it at a price I thought was a steal. I found out soon enough that it was in fact a rebound assortment of maps, most of which cam from various editions of Monin's atlas. All but a few appear to be from the 1822 edition, while a few are from the later editions through 1835. One map, of France, was by Dussieux which led to the misidentification. The entire volume was bound up with coarse thread and sewn into a makeshift cover of two tattered boards which may or may not have been original. I did not complain; it was a nice assortment of maps and I eventually ended up selling the collection for more than a fair profit, but not before I scanned the maps. Here they are, 40 out of the 42 that should be here. Some are from a later edition, as I said, and I am not sure what the two missing maps are. It is hard to find references on the atlas. I am sure it is online somewhere, ...

This is fairly common but often sought after school book or primer first published in 1832. It is a sequel to "First Book of History, by the Author of Peter Parley's Tales" which was for younger students. It went through at least 30 or 40 editions before 1850, which in this case meant printings, and often there was little to differentiate between editions. These images are from the Eleventh Edition , copyright 1835 and printed in 1836. The text is full of woodcuts or a similar type of engraving. These images are small illustrations primarily showing figures in the national dress of various countries,as well as people from English and British history. The maps are, unfortunately, the weakest part of this book. They are woodcuts or likely some other type of engraving. They are beautifully rendered, but they were bound facing each other with no tissue guards, as this was an inexpensive textbook for children. The result is a great deal of shadowing or bleeding from adjacent maps, resulting in a ghost image on each page. I have not tried to correct for this. A feature I find particularly nice about these maps is the mountains. A light black, the ...