In 1812 James Wallis (fl.1810-25) published ‘Wallis’s New British Atlas’, the largest of three county atlases he produced. He was born it is believed in Southampton in 1784. He was apprenticed to John Roper in 1799 and freed on 5 February 1811. It appears he started out as an engraver becoming a bookseller, printer, stationer and publisher. The maps are derived from the George Cole and John Roper ‘British Atlas’ of 1810, themselves derived from John Cary. Wallis did however claim that they were engraved in a ‘superior manner’. They were produced for Samuel Augustus Oddy whose publishing career appears to have been short. There was a later edition by Wallis himself c.1814 and issued through at least 1816.

By 1819 the plates were in the hands of George Ellis whose ‘New and Correct Atlas of England and Wales’ was published in that year. Although Wallis’s name is retained on the maps all of the other imprints below the maps have been removed with the usual exception of Lancashire and Warwickshire. Those of Berkshire, Cornwall and Lancashire have above them ‘Second Edition with Considerable Improvements and Additions, by G. Hebert, Geographer’. Provenance: Donald Hodson collection (1933-2016), carto-bibliographer. Batten & Bennett (1996) no. 78.3; Chubb (1927) 367; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).