William Darton (1755-1819) was born in Tottenham, the son of the Innkeeper at ‘The Coach and Six Horses’. By 1791 he was in partnership with Josiah Harvey (1764-1841) as Darton & Harvey. Darton, a Quaker, was an engraver, bookseller, printer, publisher, mapseller and printseller, his earliest works appear to date from 1791. He is though, most notable for his speciality as a pioneer of published children’s works.

Sometime around 1804 the firm of Darton and Harvey acquired the plates to the series of county maps owned by William Bent and previously published in the ‘Universal Magazine’ between 1791 and 1798. The work was intended for the children’s market which might explain why the atlas is extremely rare. Only the one example is recorded at auction which we acquired. COPAC only records the one example at Cambridge University Library. To this we can add the British Geological Survey: Conybeare. We have also sold one other example over the years to a private collector. The atlas appears in two versions. An early variant issue of the title page records Suffolk twice as here. In the second it was corrected to Sussex. The upper board also records the price of 12 Shillings for the atlas in the affixed paper title. Provenance: bookplate of Sambrooke Arthur Higgins Burne (1879-1972), a barrister in Staffordshire who served on the Bench and in the First World War as a Lieutenant with his notes; Donald Hodson collection acquired 1969, (1933-2016), carto-bibliographer, with his notes describing the rarity of this work. Carroll (1996) 53; not in Chubb; Kingsley (1982) 56; Whitaker (1949) citing this copy; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).