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View taken from Meyer's Universum, published by the Bibliographisches Institut, in Hildburgshausen.

This highly popular serial work, launched in 1833 by Carl Joseph Meyer, featured engravings of notable landscapes, vedute, and architectural monuments from around the world. The work's presentation of these images evoked a sense of unmediated access to visual spectacle but was predicated on a paradox. In his texts Meyer aspired to offer readers unprecedented and first-hand views of the known world. At the same time, however, his publishing strategy was predicated on a system of transnational recycling and unacknowledged borrowing of illustrations from other sources. Meyer's firm frequently republished the images in new configurations in different series, including in translated versions abroad. The result privileged an arbitrary and decontextualized visual presentation of the world in the interest of publishing expedience and cost-effectiveness.

Carl Joseph Meyer Meyer was born at Gotha, Germany, and was educated as a merchant in Frankfurt am Main. Meyer operated very successfully as a publisher, employing a system of serial subscription to publications, which was new at that time. To this end he founded a company, Bibliographisches Institut, in Gotha in 1826. It published several editions of the Bible, works of classical literature, the world in pictures on steel engravings ("Meyers Universum", 1833–61, 17 volumes in 12 languages with 80,000 subscribers all over Europe), and an encyclopaedia, ("Das Grosse Conversations-Lexikon für die gebildeten Stände" 1839–55, 52 volumes). His company grew substantially, and in 1828 he moved it from Gotha to Hildburghausen. He became involved in cartography, producing many atlases with steel-engraved maps printed from steel plates, including Meyer's Groẞer Hand-Atlas (1843-1860). After Meyer's death in 1856, his son Herrmann Julius Meyer took over the Bibliographisches Institut, which was at that time struggling financially.

Copperplate, good condition.