The majority of the plates for this atlas were first issued in the ‘Universal Magazine’ from 1791 to 1798 and are engraved by Benjamin Baker who was particularly active through 1824 as an engraver for the Ordnance Survey. These early Surveys are highly prized for their detail. The publisher of the ‘Universal Magazine’ was William Bent. In 1804 the plates appeared in a rare atlas entitled ‘Maps of the Several Counties and Shires in England’ by William Darton (1755-1819) and Joseph Harvey (1764-1841). Then they were acquired by the firm of Laurie and Whittle. Often thought of as mere publishers Robert Laurie (1755-1836) was a noted craftsman. He was a talented mezzotint engraver who invented a method of mezzotint printing in colour, an achievement that won him an award from the Royal Society of Arts in 1776. In the early 1790’s he entered the publishing business with James Whittle (1757-1818) as his partner. The acquisition of Sayer’s stock catapulted them into the major league. In 1806 they published a road book entitled the ‘Laurie and Whittle’s New Traveller’s Companion’ which included road maps. In the same year they published this atlas which is known by just one unrecorded example. Both works are in a similar presumably deliberate complimentary format. The following year appeared another dated 1807. A further edition appeared undated in 1810. Then following Robert Laurie’s retirement in 1812 it was renamed ‘A New and Improved English Atlas’ and issued in 1816 and 1846 without descriptive text. The intervening years are until now blank. This example of the atlas lacks a title page but it can be seen from the offset to the endpaper. No date appears to be present but the maps of England and Wales, dated 1817, and North Wales, dated 1821 help us identify the date of issue. Provenance: private English collection. Beresiner p. 50; Carroll 53; Chubb 294.