Description

PUBLICATION DETAILS: Upper right: Plate III. Bottom center: T. Clerk Sculp^t, Edin^r. First Edition, second issue. 11”w x 8 ¼”h to plate marks on sheet 12 ½w”x 9 ¼”h. Early color. Folding plan as issued. This plan bears some resemblance to the size and configuration of the small plans by Thackara & Vallance, Hill, and Tiebout, all of which were printed in 1792 (Wheat & Brun).  But, it is not a copy of any of those or later plans examined.

RARE: The rarity of the present plan is re-enforced by its absence from Phillips, List of Maps in the Library of Congress, and his Maps and Views of Washington and District of Columbia. An identical was removed from Volume 1 of the second issue of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Perthensis; or Universal Dictionary. No date, but circa 1805. Another copy is known to have an 1805 watermark.

MORRISON: Robert Morison is the printer of this revised issue. The book imprint reads: Perth, Printed for C. Mitchell and Co., and sold for them by Mr. Thomas Ostell, Ave Maria Lane, London. Sold also by Messrs. Vernon, Hood, & Sharpe, London, and all respectable Booksellers. R. Morison, Printer.“

DATE: The present plan from the second issue is not the same as the large plan in the first issue of the first edition. Why not? Perhaps the printer ran out of the larger plan and included the present smaller and less expensive plan in the second issue. This same smaller plan also appears in the second edition of the encyclopedia having the new imprint: Edinburgh. Printed for John Brown …. 1816.  Volume I of the multi-volume first edition with the larger map was published in 1796. The last volume of the first edition was published in 1806. Page 622, Vol. XIII of the undated second issue contains the following statement: “And in May 1802 Count Tommasi was appointed grand master by Pope Pius VII …” Electronic search revealed 1802 as the latest year found in Vol. XIII. The London edition, dated 1807, contains the same larger map found in the first Perth issue of 1796. The second Scotland edition (this time in Edinburgh) with the smaller map was published in 1816 (dated). Thus, the publication date for the present plan is certainly after 1802, likely after 1807 and before 1816.
 
CLERK: Thomas Clerk was an engraver and lithographer at Edinburgh.  Early addresses include Head of Reid’s Close, Canongate, 1804-05; Craig’s Close, 1806-10; and 265 High Street, 1811-26.He engraved John Thomson’s New General Atlas in 1814.

CONDITION: Fold lines, color, left edge irregular as if torn from the parent volume. Very good.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
 
Miller, Washington in Maps, pp. 44-47, but the present map is not included;
 
Smith, David Crawford, The Historians of Perth, pp. 83-97, regarding the Encyclopaedia Perthensis and its publishers;
 
Wheat & Brun, Maps and Charts Published in America before 1800, no. 527 (the small Thackara & Vallance version), 528 (the small Hill version), and 529 (the Tiebout version).