Buckinghamshire Maps

18x21 cm

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE | Divided into its- | HUNDREDS; | Containing all the | Burough & Market Towns | with the Forests Hills | Rivers Roads Distances &c | By Eman. Bowen | Geog.^r to His Majesty.
Engrav’d for the General Magazine of Arts and Sciences for W.Owen at Temple Bar 1758
This small series of maps were issued in The Natural History of England which formed part of The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences published from 1755 to 1764. Buckinghamshire appeared in the issue for December 1758. The publication was not re-issued and the maps appeared in no other work but sets of The Natural History were sold ‘price bound 12s.’ until about 1767.
Benjamin Martin (1704/5-1782), the author of the text accompanying the maps, started work as a plough-boy, became a teacher and took up writing, publishing books on many subjects including globes and the determination of longitude. He settled in Chichester about 1734 where he kept a school and became a notable maker of optical instruments but was bankrupted in 1781 and attempted suicide. He died the following year.
William Owen, the publisher of the work, was a well respected publisher and bookseller active from 1748 until his death in 1793. He was Master of the Stationers Company in 1781.
Emanuel Bowen, the engraver and cartographer, worked in London from about 1720 to 1767 and was very prolific, engraving plates for Britannia Depicta, A Complete System of Geography,  the London and Universal magazines, Harris' Complete Collection of Voyages, Universal History of the World and many of the maps in The Large English Atlas, The Royal English Atlas and Atlas Anglicanus. He was appointed engraver of Maps to George II and Louis XV.
A very good example of the map of Buckinghamshire in later fine hand colour of an uncommon map.