Atlas moderne portatif, compos?? de vingt-huit cartes sur toutes les parties du globe terrestre; A l'usage des coll??ges, des pensions, des maisons religieuses, & de toutes les personnes qui ??tudient ou enseignent la g??ographie.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

Paris: Laporte, 1779. Octavo, bound in original full old vellum with title in black ink to spine. Comprising 16pp. text, 3 double-page unnumbered plates bearing the name of the engraver Beaubl??, and 28 numbered double-page finely engraved maps, 1 of which is folded. Preserved in a later brown cloth slip case. Fine and complete. To find a pocket atlas such as this in fine condition is rare, as they were produced for schooling purposes and generally saw hard use. Laporte published the first edition, entitled Atlas moderne ou collection de cartes ƒ??, in 1777; this edition, the 'Nouvelle ??dition' of 1779, comprises an additional three (unnumbered) astronomical plates, and a ten-page introduction to geography. The maps include Asia, Asian Turkey, places in the New Testament, India, Southeast Asia & the East Indies, China & Japan, Africa, Egypt, North America, South America, Gulf of Mexico, New England, New York, New Jersey & Pennsylvania, Virginia & Maryland, Jamaica, etc. etc. The cartographer is not named. Didier Robert de Vaugondy (1723-1786) was, however, consulted prior to publication (see Note at close of Map List, p. 16). (The printed name M. Robert de Vaugondy also appears in the advertisement for other atlases on the verso of the title-page.) Didier Robert de Vaugondy, like his father Gilles Robert de Vaugondy (1688-1766), with whom he often worked side by side, was a renowned eighteenth-century Parisian cartographer. The Vaugondys were the authors of the beautiful and important Atlas Universel, published in 1757. In 1760, Didier Robert de Vaugondy was appointed royal geographer to Louis XV. A most desirable complete eighteenth-century pocket atlas.