Hertfordshire Maps

15x12 cm

HARTFORD | SHIRE | By John Seller
John Seller (fl. 1660-1697), Hydrographer to Charles II, James II and Queen Anne, is renowned for his sea charts published in 1671 under the title The English Pilot. In 1679 he began work on an ambitious project to make a new survey of the counties of England and Wales and prepare a new county atlas Atlas Anglicanus. Despite financial support from the Treasury, the scheme floundered with only six counties completed. Possibly as a means of restoring his finances, Seller prepared a seres of small county maps, generally based on on John Speed's maps of 1610, and published them in 1694 under the titles Anglia Contracta and The History of England. There were only two issues of the maps before his death in 1697 but they were printed a few years later in reprints of The History of England and in an abridgement of William Camden's Britannia. The maps were not seen again for over 60 years when the plates were re-worked incorporating some place name revisions and a plain title panel, and published in Francis Grose's Antiquities of England and Wales between 1784 and 1787* These later 'Grose editions usually included typeset text description of the county below the engraved map and continued verso.
*1787 is the last given publication date for the work but maps have been found with dated watermarks up to 1815.
Good hand coloured example of the map of Hertfordshire in the first engraved state published from c.1694 until 1703. 
Hodson Printed Maps of Hertfordshire ref. 18(i)