This rare work can arguably be called only the second purely English terrestrial world atlas ever published. Pre-dated only by the recent Richard Blome ‘Geographical Description of the Four Parts of the World’, 1670. On 29 April 1680 Robert Morden advertised for sale in the ‘London Gazette’ this his first atlas, the ‘Geography Rectified’, a geographical text illustrated with sixty-two small engraved maps. Morden had previously been in collaboration with others, largely publishing individual maps of some considerable merit. Here the maps are simple in form but are attractively engraved. A study of them indicates the possibility that the plates were engraved by Herman Moll, whose earliest known work was for Moses Pitt in the production of his atlas from 1678.

The atlas appears to have had the non-European sections typographically set before those of Europe. The first section’s pagination stops at page 204 but the ensuing non-European sections begin on page 241. This is the case in all the examples I have seen. Being an active publisher the history of the plates in the ‘Geography Rectified’ is long and not so simple. There were later editions of the work in 1688, 1693 and 1700. The second edition was ‘enlarged with about twenty new maps’ and included a total of seventy-six. Some were entirely new, others were replacements.

Provenance: Several inscriptions, ‘This Book Belongs to me Evan Grant 1742’ on first original free front endpaper; ‘John Grant January 16 1764’ on the title page; ‘George Seton 1786’ on first leaf of the dedication; George Seton (1822-1908) inscription on the later front free endpaper, he was a genealogist and historian (ODNB); acquired from Richard B. Arkway in 2003; private English collection. ESTC R214230; King (2003) pp. 148-9; Phillips (1909-) no. 4265; Sabin (1868) no. 50535; Shirley (2004) T.Mord-2a;] Tyacke (1978) no. 95.