Johnson's New Illustrated (Steel Plate) Family Atlas, with Descriptions, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical

Item Details

New York, Published by Johnson and Browning, 1861

Folio. [1], 22, [3], 23-99 pp. Striking engraved frontispiece (with tissue guard) with "American Atlas" above image. Complete with 31 single-page maps and 30 double-page maps (3 are unnumbered); all maps are steel engraved and hand colored. Many of the maps include vignettes showing important buildings and vivid scenes. Several thematic maps and diagrams are also interspersed throughout the text. Compiled, drawn, and engraved under the supervision of J.H. Colton and A.J. Johnson. Includes statistical description pages, a geographical index, and a chronological history section. Tipped in to FFEP is printed note "To the Subscribers of the Atlas" by the publisher. Black leather spine over original embossed green cloth covers, titling in gilt on front cover and spine; marbled endpapers. A good copy (wear to extremities; scuffing to spine; soiling to boards; several short tape remnants to inside front cover and first leaf; corner tip lacking on frontispiece page; small triangle tear at center lower edge of map of Texas; front hinge cracked and holding). The maps are clean, with occasional faint foxing. 

Includes double-page maps of: the World; North America; New England; New York (with 7 insets); Texas (with 3 insets); California with New Mexico (with a small Arizona underneath), Utah, Nevada and Colorado; plus several other states; South America; Europe and some of its’ individual countries; Africa; Roman Empire; and a full-page city plan of Washington DC. The atlas is highlighted by the short-lived "New Military Map of the United States" showing military districts and the map of the Southwest ("California, Territories of New Mexico and Utah and Arizona") with the newly formed Nevada shown occupying part of California to the summit line of the Sierras.