Name: Mercator's 'Geographia'
Author: Gerard Mercator

The Sunderland Collection

The first edition was published in 1578, only a few years prior to this copy.

This remarkable book is bound to a first edition of his famous ‘

’, the first time a collection of maps is given this name, and named in honour of 

, King of Mauretania, a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer - not Greek mythical 

First published in 1578, this is a second issue of Gerard Mercator’s edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’, originally written by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century BCE. The work features a world map on a Ptolemaic projection, along with twenty-seven maps of the known world: ten maps of Europe, four maps of Africa and thirteen maps of Asia. Within this, Mercator added an extra ‘Appendix’ map showing an enlargement of the Nile Delta.

These maps were the truest renditions of Ptolemy’s maps to date, and Mercator went to great lengths to include descriptions of the sources and projections he used in the five-page preface to the work. As well as adding a multitude of toponyms, correcting the latitude as accurately as he could, he embellished the cartouches with ornate strapwork, fauna, flowers, sea monsters and silk seas.

There were seven editions of Mercator’s ‘Geographia’ printed between 1578 and up until 1730, speaking to his status as a Titan of cartographic history.

The rediscovery and translation of Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’ in fifteenth-century Europe sparked a new era of mapmaking as the coordinates and instructions set out by Ptolemy’s 1,600-year-old text were used to draw maps. By the time Mercator released his own edition of the ‘Geographia’ in 1578, around twenty-seven distinct editions of this iconic work had been published in Europe.

Like Sebastian Münster, who published his own edition of the 'Geographia' in 1540, Mercator's version referenced the Latin translation by Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530). While Mercator's edition was made some decades after Münster's version and over a century after the ‘Geographia’ was initially translated in Italy by Jacobus Angelus in 1406–7, Mercator's 'Geographia' represents an early example of Ptolemy’s world view that was influential to cartographers and cosmographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Just ten years after the death of Gerard Mercator in 1594, Jodocus Hondius purchased all of the plates from the Mercator’s estate and he continued to publish editions of Mercator’s works through the early seventeenth century. In 1606, he published Mercator's Ptolemaic map (included in this book) separately - an example of which can be found within The Sunderland Collection.

After acquiring Mercator’s plates, Hondius continued to publish editions of the ‘Atlas’, reaching fourteen editions by 1633. Posthumous 'Mercator-Hondius' editions notably elaborated on the great cartographer’s work by adding up to thirty-seven new maps: seven maps of Spain and Portugal, four of Africa, eleven of Asia, five of the Americas and six new European maps. Unusually, Hondius added new continental maps but did not remove the old ones.

Hondius was the first cartographer, apart from Rumold Mercator (who inherited his father's business), to publish a map using Mercator's Projection after the inventor's death. This map, known as the 'Christian Knight Map' (c.1597), was published in England and drew inspiration from an allegorical Christian etching by Hieronymous Wierix. Both the map and its source engraving are preserved in the Sunderland Collection.

Ptolemaic Projection World Map

Map of Spain and Portugal (Ptolemaic Map of Europe II) 

Map of France (Ptolemaic Map of Europe III) 

Map of Germany and Denmark (Ptolemaic Map of Europe IV) 

Map of Italy and the Adriatic Coast, with part of the Balkans (Ptolemaic Map of Europe V)

Map of India (Ptolemaic Map of Asia X)

Map of Sri Lanka (Ptolemaic Map of Asia XII) 

Map of Southeast Asia, with part of India and showing the River Ganges (Ptolemaic Map of Asia XI)

Map of Afghanistan (Ptolemaic Map of Asia IX)

Map of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and the River Indus (Ptolemaic Map of Asia XIII)

Map of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Iran (Ptolemaic Map of Asia VII)

Map of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf, and part of Western Asia (Ptolemaic Map of Asia VI)

Map of Iran and Iraq (Ptolemaic Map of Asia V)

Map of Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus with parts of Arabia, Iraq, Sinai and Türkiye (Ptolemaic Map of Asia IV)

Map of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus (Ptolemaic Map of Asia III)

Map of Ukraine and Russia (Ptolemaic Map of Asia II)

Map of Türkiye and Cyprus (Ptolemaic Map of Asia I)

Map of the North and East Africa showing the Course of the River Nile and their supposed source, the Mountains of the Moon (Ptolemaic Map of Africa IV)

Map of Northern Africa covering parts of Libya, and Egypt (Ptolemaic Map of Africa III)

Map of Northwest Africa covering Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (Ptolemaic Map of Africa I)

Map of Greece, Macedonia and Albania (Ptolemaic Map of Europe X)

Map of the Balkans covering Romania, Bulgaria and parts of  Macedonia, Albania and Türkiye (Ptolemaic Map of Europe IX)

Map of Eastern Europe and Russia between the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (Ptolemaic Map of Europe XIII)

Map of Sardinia, Sicily and Southern Corsica (Ptolemaic Map of Europe VII)

Map of Italy, Corsica, and part of surrounding France, Switzerland, Austria and Croatia (Ptolemaic Map of Europe VI)

Appendix Map of the Nile Delta, Northern Egypt (Ptolemaic Map of Africa III)

Map of the British Isles (Ptolemaic Map of Europe I)

Map of Northern Africa covering Algeria, Libya and part of the Mediterranean (Ptolemaic Map of Africa II)

Frontispiece

This is a rare lifetime edition, notably featuring engravings by Mercator himself and presented with rich contemporary coloring. The volume is significant because few works printed during Mercator's lifetime have survived: his most famous work, the great eighteen-sheet world map of 1569 featuring his namesake projection, only survives in three copies.

This atlas is dedicated to Mercator’s dear friend and main competitor Abraham Ortelius and in turn, Mercator was lauded by Ortelius in his own atlas ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ (1570) as “the Ptolemy of [our] time.”