UNRECORDED. This series of plates was first published in William Henry Reid’s rare ‘Panorama: or, Traveller’s Instructive Guide’, 1820. The only known later history of the plates is the survival of one example only of ‘Panorama: or, Traveller’s Instructive Guide’, in the Bodleian Library (Allen 89), dated to 1825. All the maps bear the imprint of Hodgson & Co. The title bears the joint imprint of William Cole and Hodgson & Co. as publishers, at 10 Newgate Street.

In this work the engraved title and contents are retained, all typographic material including the title are omitted. All imprints are those of William Cole solely, at the same address. The remains of the Hodgson imprints can be seen here on a few plates. Little has been written about Cole or Hodgson. The main source is David Smith’s article on the Ebden series of maps published in ‘Imago Mundi’.

‘Hodgson and Company appears to have consisted of a number of Hodgsons, perhaps in partnership with others, operating out of a variety of premises between about 1820-22 and about 1830. Orlando Hodgson seems to have left the partnership in 1825. It is clear from some of Orlando’s later publications that he was interested in the production of maps, plans and atlases and it, thus, appears that Hodgson and Company only published cartographic works whilst Orlando was a partner, c.1823-25. His leaving the firm was, therefore, probably the reason for the transfer of Ebden’s map plates to Cole’ (Smith). At the same time, it would seem likely the Reid – Hodgson series of plates also passed to Cole. He is certainly cited as a successor to Hodgson & Co. in other publications. Provenance: private English collection. Refer Beresiner (1983) p. 234; not in Chubb (1927); Smith (1991); Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).