A very rare map of the county of Oxfordshire in its second and only surviving state. The map was undoubtedly engraved for John Overton as it matches in style that of Devon, which does survive. John Overton (1640-1713) was the son of a bookseller Henry Overton and married the daughter of the publisher William Garrett. He was a printseller who in 1665 acquired the stock of Peter Stent who had died of the plague that year and who had arguably the largest collection of prints on the market at the time. Amongst this stock he found twelve copper plates of the English counties by William Smith. These formed the nucleus of a set of maps of the English Counties. Overton commissioned the engraving of some new plates for missing counties. Those which Overton could not provide from his own stock were supplied by the acquired maps of Speed, Blaeu or Jansson. These county atlases were an English version of a rich seam of similar Dutch composite atlases published from the mid-seventeenth century. They are exceedingly rare surviving in just five known examples. Of these to represent Oxfordshire one includes the Speed, one is missing and the last three all contain Jansson plates! There is no known example of the first state of this plate. Its source is the Jansson map of 1646. Later atlases sold by his son Henry are similarly rare, only seven survive. In 1713 fortune gave Henry the opportunity to acquire the old John Speed plates from Christopher Browne. Therefore the second state is also a rarity. Hodson (1984-97) p.63.