A rare issue of Speed’s map of Middlesex

A highly-decorative map of Middlesex, engraved by Jodocus Hondius and published in John Speed's important atlas, 'The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain. It was derived from an unpublished map by John Norden and has inset town plans of London and Westminster (also after surveys by Norden, published 1593) and views of St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Norden was the first surveyor to plan a series of county histories with maps; however he failed to attract sufficient backing for his enterprise and never completed it, leaving Christopher Saxton to produce the first English county atlas in 1579. However Speed considered Norden's surveying superior to Saxton's and preferred to use Norden as a source where possible. As Saxton did not published a map of Middlesex (only a map of south east England), the only earlier maps of the county were from smaller-format editions of Camden's 'Britannia'. This example comes from the Roger Rea issue of the atlas, which was beset with disaster: according to an advert for the 1676 Bassett & Chiswell edition, ''the greatest part of an Impression, then newly Printed, [was] destroyed by the late dreadful Fire, 1666". Surviving examples of any Rea map are thus rare.