CHARTS

Contemporary coloured 'Sketch of the Situation of the TOWN of ST. JEAN D'ACRE, with the position of the FRENCH besieging ARMY under the command of General BONAPARTE and the BRITISH SQUADRON co-operating with GEZZAR AHMET PASHA in its Defence [...]'.

Author: 
[The Siege of Acre [Siege of St Jean D'Acre], 1799; Napoleon Bonaparte; Sir Sidney Smith (1764-1840)]
Publication details: 
On paper watermarked 'J WHATMAN | 1816'.
£450.00

A fine plan, so neatly and delicately drawn that it could easily pass for an engraving. The title concludes: '[...] its Defence under the Command of SIR SIDNEY SMITH. Kt. &ca. &ca. &ca. - on the 2nd: day of May 1799.' In landscape on one side of a piece of laid paper, 29 x 42cm, with the plan itself within a 19.5 x 32.5cm border. The drawing and the precise and detailed lettering are in ink, the whole coloured in grey, brown, pink and blue watercolour. On aged and lightly-creased paper, with a couple of small unobtrusive holes. On a scale of one and a half inches to half a mile.

Extensive manuscript list (cartographer's probate inventory?), in a late eighteenth-century hand, docketed 'Contents of Maps, Charts, &c in the largest Box, from No. 65 to No. 166', including references to maps by John Hamilton Moore.

Author: 
[John Hamilton Moore (c.1738-1807), Scottish cartographer and author; British map-making; Georgian maps; cartography]
Extensive manuscript list (cartographer's probate inventory?)
Publication details: 
English; circa 1790.
£450.00
Extensive manuscript list (cartographer's probate inventory?)

8vo, 6 pp. Two bifoliums sewn together. On laid paper with Britannia watermark. Text clear and complete. Neatly written out at approximately 38 lines to the page. On aged paper, with slight damage to the first bifolium, the leaves of which are detaching at the spine. Some of the items have been lightly scored through in pencil, but are still legible. The inclusion of such items as '149 Blank Silk Paper for copying Maps' would appear to indicate that the document is an inventory (for probate?) of a cartographer's stock. Last two entries read '165 Blank Sheets of Paper for copying Maps.

2 Autograph Letters Signed by Close (both 'C. F. Close') to Dawkins; and one Typed Letter Signed ('H. R. Douglas') from Douglas to Close.

Author: 
Sir Charles Close [Sir Charles Frederick Arden-Close] (1865-1952), surveyor and geographer; Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Percy Douglas (1876-1939) [Sir Wiliam Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929), geologist]
Publication details: 
Close's letters: 17 and 24 April 1926, both on letterhead of Coytbury, St. Giles's Hill, Winchester; Douglas's letter: 23 April 1926, on letterhead of the Hydrographic Department, Admiralty, Whitehall, London, S.W.1.
£100.00

All three letters good, on lightly aged paper. Close's first letter (12mo, 2 pp): He is pleased to hear 'that Professor O. T. Jones is convalescent and back at work'. Close will write to him to ask if he will take part in the 'Commission' on the 'Terrasses littorales'. Having none 'handy', he is writing to the Admiralty Hydrographer for a 'list of Admiralty Charts'. The Closes have 'settled to take a house in Jersey for the children's holidays', so there is 'little chance of our being at Oxford for the British Association meeting'.

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