67 George Cole / John Roper 1805

The British Atlas, a joint work of Cole (artist and cartographer) and Roper included maps and town plans drawn by George Cole and others and engraved by John Roper to accompany J Britton and E W Brayley’s The Beauties of England and Wales. This was a topographic work published in parts with Devon usually found bound and published together with Dorset in Volume IV with the original title page dated 1803.

The Cole and Roper maps appeared in Joseph Nightingale’s (fl.1806-20) English Topography and in Thomas Dugdale’s Curiosities of Great Britain or England and Wales Delineated. The latter was published by John Tallis until Lucinda Tallis took over her husband’s business when he died; their son, John Tallis, published this work with from c.1843. However, by this time Cole and Roper’s maps were progressively being replaced with maps in a similar style by Joshua Archer (see 119). Later, H G Collins used lithographs of Cole and Roper’s maps, and copies are found both in an untitled atlas and in Collins’ Railway and Pedestrian Atlas of England.

Copies of the counties in Britton and Brayley’s The Beauties of England and Wales are held by almost all major libraries but as they do not specify the exact volumes in their holdings, only the author´s copy is reported (as representative). Many of the multiple volume sets of Curiosities of Great Britain. England and Wales Delineated (1835) also contain An Alphabetical Chronology of Remarkable Events by Leonard Townsend, and a separate title page is present for this (final) volume (including the author´s 11-volume set).

John Hayman of Exeter prepared two maps of Exeter and one appeared in The Beauties of England and Wales. For a more detailed description of both the volume and John Hayman´s maps, see Kit Batten: The Exeter City Maps of John Hayman.

Size 175 x 230 mm.                                                                                                                                              SCALE (20 = 45 mm) Miles.

DEVONSHIRE. Four imprints: London; Published for the Proprietors by Vernor & Hood, Poultry; June 1st. 1805. (CeOS); Engraved by J. Roper, from a Drawing by G. Cole. (AeOS); to accompany the Beauties of England and Wales (EeOS); and Drawn and Engraved under the direction of J. Britton just below W. of Greenwich in border (Ce).