John Stockdale (1750-1814) was a successful bookseller, publisher and auctioneer. He was born in Cumberland and is believed to have been a blacksmith before becoming a valet to John Astley. In about 1773 he married Mary Ridgeway, the sister of James Ridgeway, a London publisher. After working as a bookseller he set up in business himself in 1781 acquiring the ‘London Courant’ in the same year. He was the subject of a number of libel cases and caricatures by James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson.

In 1789 he published Arthur Phillip’s ‘Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay’. He published the ‘New British Atlas’ including maps by John Cary in 1805. The following year a second edition of William Camden’s ‘Britannia’ with the same Cary maps. In 1806 he published a large-scale map of Scotland in 12 sheets. It was engraved by Samuel John Neele (1758-1824). Encouraged, he went on to issue this 20 sheet map of England and Wales similarly engraved by Neele. Both were on the scale of three and a half miles to an inch. Stockdale died in 1814 virtually bankrupt. Provenance: Bloomsbury Auctions 13 February 2014 lot 116. Chubb (1927) p. 454; ODNB; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).