Australia & Tasmania Map 1882 Regional Print - Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart

Edward Stanford of London issued this map of Australia and Tasmania in 1882 as page 41 of the Quarto edition of Stanford's London Atlas of Universal Geography, a world atlas of 44 coloured maps. The Stanford firm had been mapping in London since 1854 and in 1874 acquired the London atlas of 1834 from John Arrowsmith, and its preface describes this quarto as a handy reference that repeats on larger scales the parts of the earth most connected with English interests, a foundation for a truly British atlas. The sheet is a steel-engraved map in color with relief in hachures, two bar scales and submarine telegraph cables drawn across the seas. It is a regional map of the continent and Tasmania, drawn in 1882 when Australia was divided into six British colonies that would not federate until 1901.

The six colonies shown are Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, each shaded in its own color. Victoria, the smallest on the mainland, was the most densely settled thanks to the gold rushes of the 1850s, and its capital Melbourne rivaled Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, as the leading city. Queensland, which had split from New South Wales in 1859, was growing on sugar and cattle, while South Australia, founded in 1836 as a planned colony without convicts, had Adelaide as its capital and had completed the Overland Telegraph across the continent in 1872. Western Australia was the largest and least populated, with its capital Perth on the Swan River. Together the colonies read as a ring of coastal settlements tied to Britain by cable.

Anyone whose ancestors sailed from Britain to one of these colonies in the 1880s, or who follows the history of telegraphs, shipping and communications, will find a pointed gift in a sheet that records the cable links to the outside world. TheMapVault's Stanford 1926 Australia and Tasmania shows a federated Commonwealth with states and railways, while this 1882 edition is the pre-federation picture of separate colonies, steel-engraved and focused on cables and relief. It follows Cartee's 1856 school map and Gray's 1878 American atlas sheet in the shop's Australian run, and it is the most British of the three in outlook. 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.