Thomas Mellon's Copy

A New and Elegant General Atlas.

Boston: Thomas & Andrews, May, 1812.

Price: $3,000.00


About the item

63 engraved maps (2-double-page). 4to. Thomas Mellon's Copy. Modern tan morocco with green cartographic inlays on the upper cover, slipcase. Foxing and browning, a few minor edge tears. Provenance: Thomas Mellon (signed on the title). American Imprints 24632; Cohen, Mapping the West, p. 80; Phillips, Atlases 718; Ristow pp.265-266; Rumsey 28.; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West 259, 260, 261 & 262.

Item #339392

The first edition of this early, influential American atlas was published at Philadelphia in 1804, with an editions following at Boston in 1805. The present 1812 edition with seven new maps added (Austalasia, Polynesia, New-Granada, Carracas, Peru, Chili, and La Plata). Nearly half the maps in the atlas relate to the Americas, including several notable maps of the American west. Commenting on the Louisiana map (which extends to the Pacific), Cohen writes: "The Samuel Lewis map was the primary map of the newly purchased territory of Louisiana and its surroundings and, as such, reflected the shaped American popular geographical images of the western interior at the time of Lewis and Clark."

This example with provenance to Thomas Mellon (1813-1908), American entrepreneur, lawyer, and judge, best known as the founder of Mellon Bank and patriarch of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh.