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Emanuel Bowen

We are presenting 25 large, decoratively coloured, engraved maps by the English engraver and cartographer Emanuel Bowen.

All maps come out of the work The Maps and Charts to the Modern Part of the Universal History (London: printed for T. Osborne etc., 1766). Most of the maps had however first been published already in 1747 in the Bowen`s Complete System of Geography.

Most of the exact circumstances of Bowen’s life are unknown. He flourished from about 1714 up to his death in 1767 in London. Though he was official cartographer of George II of England and Louis XV of France he died pennilessly.

His son Thomas continued the work of his father and died in 1790 also as a poor man in worker’s house in Clerkenwell in the present-day London Borough of Islington.

Bowen is considered one of the leading English map and atlas-makers of the 18th century. He also engraved many maps for magazines and books as well as some sea charts for the maritime atlases of Murdoch Mackenzie.

Emanuel Bowen became first of all famous for his maps of England and Wales. The road atlas Britannia Depicta which was published in 1720 by John Owen was based on maps by John Ogilby and appeared in numerous editions until 1795.
The maps are showing the courses of various roads as well as small maps of English counties and shires accompanied by historical facts and heraldic information.
(We also have some of these maps in stock, if you are interested please contact us via our contact form.)

Together with his son-in-law and apprentice Thomas Kitchin (1718–1784) Bowen created maps of all counties of England and Wales which were compiled to a work titled The Large English Atlas which was published several times between 1755 and the end of the century.

Though Bowles’ cartographic main field was England and Wales, the maps presented here are showing areas spread over the whole world. The maps are captivating by their beautiful, partly figural cartouches and the splendid colouring.

Feel free to explore the enlargeable pictures with our Zoombrowser

 

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