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RARE FRENCH SCHOOL ATLAS INCLUDING 6 MAPS OF AMERICA
[LAPORTE, l'Abbé Joseph de]. Atlas Moderne Portatif, composé de vingt-huit cartes sur touts les parties du globe terrestre; ... Nouvelle édition, augmentée de trois nouvelles cartes astronomiques.
Paris, (heirs of Joseph de?) Laporte, 1781. 8vo. With 3 unnumbered and 28 numbered maps, charts and diagrams (30 double-page and 1 larger folding, 27 x 33.5 cm). Coloured by a contemporary hand, mostly in outline. Contemporary tanned sheepskin.
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Third edition (the last to note the American colonies as "Possessions Angloises") of a popular French school atlas of the world, showing the American colonies in their transition to independence. Originally published by Laporte (1713-1779) the year after the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, it was expanded in 1779 and reprinted here in the year France formally recognized the new United States. Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's historical atlases are advertised on the back of the title-page, leading some to dubiously ascribe Laporte's maps to him. In addition to the usual maps of the World, continents, and states of Europe, the author takes special interest in the new United States of America, though the division into colonies is both out-of-date and eccentric: Laporte must have misread a New England map that divided the names for the colonies Massachu-setts and Connecti-cut, so that he turns them into four colonies, "Maschou C.," "Setts C.," Conneti C." and "Cot C." (corrected in the 1786 edition). He also still included Plymouth Colony, which had merged into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691 (he labled Rhode Island, but does not designate it a colony). These are all shown together as a single entity, reflecting the New England Confederation. The two maps also show the colonies New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and part of Carolina. The atlas further includes maps of the Gulf of Mexico; the West Indies & Carribean; Jamaica; China, Japan & Korea; India, Southeast Asia & the East Indies; Turkey; Egypt (ancient & modern in one map); Greece; and a New Testament map of the eastern Mediterranean with insets showing Judea and Jerusalem. The three unnumbered plates show the division of the globe, diagrams explaining solar and lunar eclipses, and the celestial hemispheres. Plate 1 shows an armillary sphere and Copernican and Ptolmaic charts of the solar system.
First published as Atlas Moderne ou Collection de Cartes in 1777 (we thank Roger Baskes for a description), it was intended primarily for "la jeunesse des Colléges & des Pensions," "des Maisons Religieuses, & toutes les personnes qui étudient ou enseignent la géographie," and the foreword, after noting the success of the first edition, says it has been improved with this clientelle in mind. It went through at least six editions before the end of the century and at least three in the nineteenth century. Many of the 28 numbered plates were revised, probably when the present title, the three unnumbered plates and the eleven-page introduction with definitions of geographic terms were added for the "nouvelle édition" of 1779 (hence Robert de Vaugondy's approbation, dated 5 December 1778, in the present edition). It may follow a larger atlas by Jean Lattré (1762 and later), but the maps of New England, Virginia and Jamaica have no precedents there and are also not directly copied from those in Bellin's 1763 Petit Atlas. The engraver Beaublé signed the celestial chart.
The inscription on the title-page reads, "au Secrétaire des Mines/acheté du proposant[?] Garin/en 1794 ... pris 28 ..." and "J. G. Albertin", and there is an impression of a mermaid armorial seal (in paper over sealing wax) on the front pastedown. School atlases generally saw hard use, and all editions of the present one are rare. This copy has survived well in a contemporary binding, but many plates show spotting, minor stains, or minor tears along the folds or in the margins. More serious tears affect the cartographic image in three of the European maps and the blank background and border in the world map and folding map of France. A rare school atlas, with maps of America engraved only one year after the Declaration of Independence, with a 1794 donor's or owner's inscription on the title-page.
