Here are four separate maps on one sheet by Gerard Mercator illustrates four of the British Islands. That of Anglesey appears to have been derived from the Christopher Saxton map from 1579. The Isle of Wight appears to be derived from the Baptista Boazio map of the island from 1591 with the notable alteration to the size of the sandbank off the northeast coast. Guernsey is reasonably accurate and bears a remarkable similarity to the manuscript prepared by Reyner Wolfe c.1565. Indeed, every placename on the manuscript is repeated here with no additional names. That of Jersey is derived from the manuscript by John Norden (British Library Add. MS. 31,853) presented to Queen Elizabeth. It was published in the third part of Mercator’s atlas first published in 1595. This example with French text on the verso was issued in the Henricus Hondius edition of 1628. Gerard Mercator (1512-94), the inventor of the projection named after him, began in 1585 to produce a series of ‘Tabulae Geographicae’ of differing European countries. This culminated in 1595 in the ‘Atlas Sive Cosmographicae’, the first use of the term ‘Atlas’. It contained 107 maps of the world. The birth of the modern atlas as we know it is not quite so simple. The first collections of maps representing the world were put together in Italy and are loosely called Lafreri atlases after their main proponent Antonio Lafreri. However, these contained maps by various cartographers and therefore were in different styles and sizes, the maps usually bear large, attached margins to make them uniform. In 1570 Abraham Ortelius published the ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, the first collection of maps with a uniform size and style. It was an immediate success. Mercator is one of the giants in the history of cartography; it is he who began the scientific study of the subject. His talents were recognised at the time by Ortelius who called him the ‘Ptolemy of our time’. Born near Antwerp. He studied mathematics at the University of Leuven under Gemma Frisius. Provenance: Bernard Shapero 1985; private Jersey collection. Karrow (1993) 56/159; Keuning (1947); Van der Krogt (1997-2010) 5700:1A; Koeman (1967-70) Me 28A (25); Watelet (1994).