The fashion for publishing larger format two-sheet maps began with Alxis-Hubert Jaillot in Paris in 1674. It was the English however, who took to the new format. William Berry quickly followed but it was at the turn of the century when it really gained momentum. Atlases by Herman Moll, John Senex, and George Willdey were published. In 1715 Philip Overton had the foresight to see the demand for larger scale maps of the English counties. The ‘Post-Boy’ for 26 February to 1 March 1714/15 carried an announcement for a two-sheet map of Oxfordshire. It was ten years later, and in partnership with Thomas Bowles that any further counties were issued.

A reduction of John Warburton, Joseph Bland, and Payler Smyth’s map of Essex, Middlesex, and Hertfordshire was published in 1726 by Overton and Bowles. This was followed by one of Sussex at about the same time which drew on Richard Budgen’s map of 1724. This rare map of Yorkshire from 1728 is the only other county he published. It is a reduction of Warburton’s extremely rare map of c.1720. This itself is very rare, when offered to the British Library in 1983 it was described as being unrecorded, indeed it is not recorded in Rodger’s book of ‘Large Scale County Maps of the British Isles’.

Philip Overton (fl.1707-45) was the third son of the map and printseller John Overton (1640-1713). In 1707 his father set him up in business with £200 ‘toward his advancement and setting up a trade’, independently from his older brother Henry Overton ((1676?-1751). In 1708 he was in partnership with John Bowles, Thomas Bowles, and others to publish the two-sheet maps of Herman Moll which were later published as ‘The World Described’. He worked in partnership with several other publishers including, Christopher Browne Two further sums of £100 each were made in 1711. He died in 1745 and his widow Mary Overton continued the business for a short time before it was acquired by Robert Sayer in 1749.

The fact that these maps were separately published accounts for the poor survival. It is mainly those examples preserved in composite atlases over the years which have survived. Provenance: Alex Jackson collection; private English collection since 2002. Armitage & Baynton-Williams (2012); Hodson (1984-97) I pp. 166-8; not in Rodger (1972) 116; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams.