Cornwall Maps

43x32 cm

The Dispatch Atlas
CORNWALL 
BY EDW.^D WELLER. F.R.G.S.
Weekly Dispatch Atlas. 139 Fleet Street.  | Engraved by Edw.^d Weller, Duke Str.^t Bloomsbury.
E. Weller Lithog.^r
Inset map of the Scilly Isles.

Commencing publication in 1859, this series of maps were printed by lithographic transfer from an engraved plate for The Weekly Dispatch Newspaper. The engraving work for the series was shared between Edward Weller, John Dower, and Benjamin Rees Davies. The maps were published in parts issues and when the series was complete, in The Dispatch Atlas in 1863. The publishers Cassell Petter and Galpin acquired the plates publishing them as loose sheets from 1864 and in Cassell's Illustrated family paper and Cassell's British Atlas in 1867. By 1869, the firm of G. W. Bacon had purchased the plates and published them in a number of titles for over forty years.
Edward Weller (1819-1884) mapmaker, engraver, lithographer and printer, was born in London on 1st July 1819. He was left £50 in 1831 by his uncle, engraver and copperplate printer, Sidney Hall (1788?-1831) to pay for his apprenticeship. His output was considerable, producing maps from 1852 until his death in 1884, and included maps for Philips County Atlas 1857, The Imperial Atlas for Blackie & Sons 1860, A Middle Class Atlas of General Geography Macleod 1864, four atlases for Francis Collier, 109 maps for the Royal Geographical sociey between 1857 and 1872, and maps for Murray's Handbooks.
He married Mary Ann Ward 31 May 1847. On the 1851 census he was described as a map engraver living at Cadogan Terrace, Chelsea, with his wife, three children, two servants and a lodger. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society 14 April 1851. On the death of his aunt, Selina Hall in 1853, he inherited the Hall business in Bury Street, Bloomsbury. On the 1861 census he is described as a painter living in Red Lion Square with his wife, six chldren and two servants, on the 1871 census he is given as a geographical engraver and lithographic printer at the same address with his wife six daughters and a servant. The 1881 census records that he was employing fourteen men and four boys with his household now comprising his wife, five unmarried daughters, a housemaid and a cook. He died at Red Lion Square 17th May 1884 his estate valued at £7,626.6s.5d. passed to his wife Mary Ann. His son Francis Sydney Weller (1849-1910) was also a mapmaker.

This map of Cornwall, with the first three words of the title in a design showing Mercury above a hemisphere. with the page number 14 printed from type outside the bottom rigtht border, and with Weller's Duke Street address, was published in the The Dispatch Atlas 1863.
Very good in original hand colour.