Middlesex by John Owen / Emanuel Bowen

Code: 50250

Author: Owen, John & Bowen, Emanuel

Publisher: Britannia Depicta

Date published: 1720circa

No 23. Copper engraving with later hand colouring. Overall size in hinged off white fully conservation mount and back (so floating freely apart from two pieces of archival tape) : 26.7cms x 34.2cms. Engraved size : 115mm x 180mm. Features New Brantford, Hounslow, Maidenhead, Reading. On verso is number 24 two Barkshire strips and one Wiltshre featuring Newbury, Marlborough, Hungerford (uncoloured). Slight overall browning else very good condition. Emanuel Bowen, in collaboration with John Owen, engraved the maps for the half-scale reduction of Ogilby's road maps of 1675. The need for a smaller version to take on coach travel was supplied by their Britannia Depicta and was first published in 1720 : The Whole for its Compendious Variety & Exactness, preferable to all other Books of Roads hitherto Published or Proposed ; And calculated not only for the direction of the Traveller (as they are) but the general use of the Gentleman and Tradesman. This set of maps was very popular and had many re-issues and was probably the most successful of the pocket road maps combining as it did individual county maps followed by a set of strip road maps.