A Mirror of the World: Five Centuries of Geographical Atlases
Gerardi Mercatoris et J. Hondii Atlas ou representation
du monde universal… Amsterdam, Henry Hondius, 1633. Vol. I
1 vol.(303 pp.) 47õ30 cm. Copperplate engraving.
Shelfmark: Ê 0-Ìèð-8/48
This French-language work, dating from 1633, is a reprint of Mercator's Atlas. The celebrated world atlas of Gerardus Mercator was first issued in 1595, a year after his death. The atlas contained a treatise on the creation of the world and 107 maps with geographical descriptions, of wich 102 were compiled by Mercator himself. In 1602 the heirs of Mercator brought out a second edition of the atlas. In 1604 they sold all the copper plates from which the atlas was printed, to the Amsterdam publisher Jodocus Hondius the Elder, together with the rights to issue the atlas. Hondius continued to publish Mercator's work, constantly adding new maps and information. After Hondius' death in 1612, the atlas was continued by his sons. In 1638 publication was transferred to Jan Janssonius, who removed Mercator and Hondius' names from the title page of the Atlas and separate maps.
In Russia, the text of the Atlas was translated into Russian in 1630 and given the title Cosmography in Seventy Six Chapters (Semidesyatishestiglavaya Kosmografia). In 1637, a new translation called the Description of the Whole Earth, Lands, and Great States (Kniga glagolema sirech opisaniya sego sveta, zemel', i gosudarstv velikikh) was made by order Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich. A third translation also appeared. These translations were not printed, but were widely read in manuscript form, they are valuable landmarks of literature of the era in translation. They were used in the compilation of the map Description of the Whole Earth, Lands, and Great States, which was printed at the beginning of the 18th century and was extremly popular, eventually becoming a cheap popular picture known as the Illustrated Cosmography (Litsevaya Kosmografia).
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