History of Cartography

SECOND EDITION, revised and enlarged by R. A. Skelton.

Publisher: Precedent Publishing, 1985.

Physical description: 312 p.: ill, 132 pl., 8.

This expanded second edition of Bagrow and Skelton's History of Cartography marks the reappearance of this seminal work after a hiatus of nearly a half century. As a reprint project undertaken many years after the book last appeared, finding suitable materials to work from proved to be no easy task. Because of the wealth of monochrome and color plates, the book could only be properly reproduced using the original materials. Ultimately the authors were able to obtain materials from the original printer Scotchprints or contact films made directly from original plates, thus allowing the work to preserve the beauty and clarity of the illustrations.

Old maps, collated with other materials, help us to elucidate the course of human history. It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that maps were gradually stripped of their artistic decoration and transformed into plain, specialist sources of information based upon measurement. Maps are objects of historical, artistic, and cultural significance, and thus collecting them seems to need no justification, simply enjoyment.