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The Queen's Atlas: Saxton's Elizabethan Masterpiece

By (author) David Fletcher

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| book description |

Nowadays, we take for granted the ready availability of maps of all kinds. In mid-Tudor England, they were rare. All this was to change in 1579 when Christopher Saxton, a farmer from the West Riding of Yorkshire, became the first cartographer to make a published atlas of all the counties of England and Wales. This book traces the story of Saxtonâ€™s life and legacy by reconstructing his extraordinary mapmaking project alongside the crucial nature of the support and encouragement he received from Queen Elizabeth I and her court. Saxtonâ€™s atlas became the template for most detailed maps of the country for almost two centuries: it is hard to exaggerate its importance. For many, his atlas provided the first detailed image of England and Wales they had ever seen, showing the Elizabethan kingdom as a whole and in its constituent parts. This lavishly illustrated book reproduces all Saxtonâ€™s county maps together with many other illustrations revealing the forebears and successors to this groundbreaking work. Today, Saxtonâ€™s maps give us an invaluable cartographic snapshot of late Tudor England.