A sheet with five maps of remote islands of the British Isles. At the top are those of the ‘Isles of Guernsey, Herm, Sark and Alderney’, ‘Isle of Jersey’, and the ‘Isles of Scilly’. Below are the ‘Isle of Man’ and the ‘Isle of Wight’. In the middle is the title with two engraved views either side. On the left a ‘View of Eddystone Light House’ and on the right ‘Freshwater Bay in the Isle of Wight, with a distant View of the Needle Rocks.’ It was first published in John Thomson’s ‘New General Atlas’ 1817.

John Thomson (fl.1804-37) was born in 1777 to a merchant father in Edinburgh. Apprenticed to a bookbinder in 1804, he started business as a bookseller in Hunter Square, Edinburgh, in 1807. His first major publication was the ‘Traveller’s Guide’ of 1798 which ran to nine editions. ‘A New General Atlas’ was a superb folio production issued in 1817 and again successful with several later editions.

That of Guernsey is devoid of roads and does not yet record the reclamation of the Braye du Val undertaken in 1806 to 1808. The roads in Jersey are however recorded as they are to in the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight. The maps are ‘Drawn & Engraved’ by Nathaniel Rogers Hewitt (fl.1804-41) of London. Phillips (1909-) nos. 731 & 750; Sanderson 448 no. 13; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).