The Speed map of New England

SPEED, John.

A Map of New England and New York.
London: Thomas Bassett & Richard Chiswell, 1676. Coloured. 385 x 505mm.

An important map of the two provinces published a little over a decade after the English took New York City from the Dutch in 1664. It shows the Eastern Seaboard from Pennobscot south to Delaware Bay, with the cartography taken from the Jansson/Visscher 'Belgii Novi' map, although it omits most of Chesapeake Bay as that area was detailed on another new map. On the reverse is a letterpress text, 'The Description of New England'.
Although the map is usually attributed to Speed, it was engraved by Francis Lamb for the 1676 edition of Speed's 'Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World' (the first English world atlas, first published 1627), by which time Speed had been dead for nearly half a century.

BURDEN: 455, 'one of the first maps to depict the English pre-eminence in the region'.
Stock ID : 23794