Joseph Ellis (fl.1758-d.1802) was an engraver whose most important cartographic production was the atlas named after him of the English counties. The maps were engraved in the style of Thomas Kitchin, as seen in his ‘England Illustrated’ of 1764. Five of the maps are engraved by William Palmer, Cornwall by Louis Stanislas D’Arcy De la Rochette, Worcester by William Fowler and fourteen are unidentified. It was first published in 1765 as the ‘New English Atlas’ of which only one incomplete example survives in the British Library. The atlas was published by Carington Bowles (1724-93) and Robert Sayer (1725?-94), two of the most established mapsellers at the time. It was re-named ‘Ellis’s English Atlas’ in 1766. There were no less than five versions in that year, three significantly different. A 50-map and 54-map issue, both with variant title pages and a French edition with 54 maps. The larger content issues are particularly rare. They include folding maps of the rivers of England and Wales, twenty-five miles round London, Jersey and Guernsey. This is the variant issue with Robert Sayer named first in the imprint. The work was also issued with each map on a single leaf or back-to-back reducing its bulk for travelling purposes. Indeed, the title states ‘Price 10s. 6d. in Red Leather for the Pocket’. The latter tends to be rarer. Provenance: private English collection. Chubb (1927) 228; ESTC T153942; Hodson (1984-97) 242; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).