James Wallis (fl.1810-25) 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. For these county maps Wallis largely copied George Cole and John Cary. They were produced for Samuel Augustus Oddy whose publishing career appears to have been short. The first edition entitled ‘Wallis’s New British Atlas’ was published in 1813, although dated 1812 on the title page. This second edition is by Wallis himself and was issued from c.1814.

Ten maps here bear a further note above stating ‘Second Edition with Considerable Improvements & Additions, by L. [or G.] Hebert, Geographer’. G. Hebert is listed in Worms & Baynton-Williams as being at 16 Noel Street, Soho, in 1814, as a draughtsman, cartographer and surveyor. Whilst L. Hebert is not, the two may well be a related. All of these have the imprint dates altered to 1814. Two additional maps of North and South Wales appear for the first time in this edition. Here that of South Wales bears the Hebert addition and is dated 1814. That of North Wales is here dated 1816 which I have noted in other later issued examples. That of Cambridge similarly bears the later date of 1816. Many of the maps still bear imprints of Oddy who held an interest in the first edition alone. According to the upper board the atlas was priced by hand at £2 12s 6d. 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. Provenance: Donald Hodson collection (1933-2016), carto-bibliographer. Not in Chubb (1927); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).