FIRST EDITION FIRST STATE. The two great publishers of the nineteenth century of large scale county maps were the Greenwood brothers and Andrew Bryant (fl.1822-35). The elephant in the room was the Ordnance Survey which with government backing eventually forced them both out of the business. Bryant followed Greenwood into the business and published his first county survey, of Hertfordshire in 1822. There were a total of twelve county surveys and one of the East Riding of Yorkshire, the last being that of Herefordshire in 1835. This survey of Oxfordshire was carried out in the year 1823 and published 1 May 1824. There was only one edition.

A highly regarded detailed map drawn to the scale of one and a half inches to the mile. The Key shows that the detail includes amongst others individual buildings, castles, nursery grounds and gardens, canals, turnpike and mail roads, lanes and bridle roads, and even fox covers. The roads are shown with the distance from London in miles. There is an attractive vignette view of Christ Church, Oxford, lower left. This example is marked ‘PROOF’ in the lower right corner as noted by Rodger and is the rarer of the two states. There are surprisingly effectively only three large scale county maps of Oxford; those of Thomas Jefferys in 1768, Richard Davies in 1797 and Bryant. Apart from the Ordnance Survey this is the only large scale map of the county in the nineteenth century and by far the more attractive. Greenwood did not publish one of the county. It is complete with its original box, in superb early wash colour and in good condition. Provenance: private English collection. Rodger (1972) 377; Tooley Dictionary.