First English Map of Australia. Numbered Limited Edition (1744)

$86.00

Hollandia Nova – Terra Australis (New Holland – Southern Land). A Complete Map of the Southern Continent Surveyed by Capt. Abel Tasman & Depicted by Order of the East India Company in Holland in the Stadt House at Amsterdam.

An important map of New Holland, Land of the South – and the first English map of Australia by itself (not as part of a world map or map of Asia or Pacific).
Numbered Limited Edition reproduction (243 of 750) from original copperplate-engraved map c.1744 by Emanuel Bowen. Bowen's map was an English update of the 1664 map published by French traveller and writer, Melchisedec Thevenot (c1620 -1692), (who invented the spirit level and wrote one of the first books on swimming).

Emanuel Bowen (1693-1767), flourished as a map-maker from 1714 to 1767, and was engraver to both George II of England and Louis XV of France. He produced some of the most attractive maps of the 18th century, and often added historic and personal comments that make them even more interesting. On this map Bowen wrote, "It is impossible to conceive a Country that promises fairer from its Situation, than this of Terra Australis; no longer incognita…" This map of Australia was
published 26 years prior to the end of the long search for the 'great south land' – when James Cook navigated and charted the East Coast of New South Wales (Limited Edition also, below)

Map size: 46cm x 59cm (18 x 23.25 inches). Print size: 52cm x 65cm (20.5 x 25.5 inches).