An attractive large scale map in four-sheets of North and Central America showing the West Indies. The map is derived from D’Anville’s map of 1746 with several “additions and improvements” according to the Treaty of Paris in 1763. A note lower left states “These Maps given gratis in this Work, were Drawn & Engrav’d at the expence of the Duke of Orleans, and cost several thousand Pounds, are all translated into English with a great number of additional Names of Places with Remarks Since the Peace of 1763”. There are several further notations throughout the map. One of these additional notes is particularly fascinating. In the west is a legend which reads “Northwest of California in Lat. 38, 30, where no Spaniard ever settled, is the Harbor of Sir Francis Drake, where he remained 5 weeks in 1579, and with remarkable form and ceremony … took possession of the country for Queen Elizabeth, calling it the Kingdom of New Albion. Notwithstanding so clear a fact, observed in all other charts, Mr. De Lile and Mr Danville have agreed to suppress it; and rather than mention New Albion as an English claim founded by Drake … they castrate their own maps to blind his discovery”. This is a not untypical comment amongst cartographers taking political liberty! To the left of the title cartouche is a lengthy legend detailing the Treaty of Paris of 1763, specifically which territories now belonged to Britain, Spain and France. There is good up-to-date detail of the interior courtesy of current French and English sources although some like the Great River of the West are left over from a previous era. There is a large inset upper left features Hudson Bay and its approaches.

The map was issued in the first edition of Malachy Postlethwait’s ‘Dictionary of Trade and Commerce’ issued 1751-5, this being an example of the second state which appeared in the third edition of 1766. Postlethwait (1707-67) was a writer on economics and spent 20 years translating and improving the work of Jacques Savary des Bruslon which was first published in 1723-30 in Paris. The map is beautifully engraved by Richard Seale with the ornate cartouches being the work of Anthony Walker. It is issued as four sheets un-joined but are here offered made up as intended. Lowery (1912) 382; Lowndes (1864) p. 1931; Phillips (1901) p. 571; Sabin (1868) 77277; Sellers & Van Ee (1981) 14; Wheat (1957) 127.