New Zealand Map 1896 Regional Print - Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin

Edward Stanford of London published this fine, highly detailed map of New Zealand, which the catalog dates to 1896, noting that Stanford had issued it separately as early as 1877. Stanford, born in Holborn in 1827, was apprenticed to a printer at fourteen, set up on his own in 1853 and founded his Geographical Establishment in 1857, becoming an agent for the Ordnance Survey and the Admiralty. The sheet is meticulously colored by counties and shows fine detail throughout, as in the best of the firm's library maps. It is a regional map of the colony, made in 1896 when New Zealand was a self-governing colony under Richard Seddon, three years after women won the vote and fourteen years after the first frozen meat shipment to Britain.

The North and South Islands are divided into counties, the local government units that replaced the provinces in 1876. Auckland sits on its isthmus in the north, and Wellington, on Cook Strait, had been the capital since 1865. Christchurch, the chief city of Canterbury, lies on the plain below the Southern Alps, and Dunedin, in Otago, had grown wealthy on gold and wool. Rail lines and roads thread the settled districts, and the Southern Alps rise along the spine of the South Island. The Waikato and the thermal country to the east of it appear as the heart of the North Island.

A New Zealand family, a descendant of the Canterbury or Otago settlers, or a lover of Stanford's library maps will find a lasting gift here, perhaps for an anniversary or a farewell. TheMapVault's Hunt and Eaton map of 1893 is an American commercial version with a Tasmania inset, and Tallis's 1851 sheet is the decorative settler-era view; this Stanford edition is the British reference map, finely colored by county. Paul's 1938 tourist sheet and Cook's 1774 chart bracket it in time. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.