France Map 1883 Atlas Print - Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse

George Franklin Cram drew this map of France for Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World, copyrighted in 1883 and published by A.C. Shewey and Company of Chicago and Rushville, Indiana, with Benedict credited as engraver. The catalog identifies it as the first edition and the first mass-production world atlas Cram made, a run reissued in changing formats until 1952, which means this sheet comes from the very start of one of the most durable American atlas lines. At 31 by 26 centimeters and 1:4,400,000, the map uses outline or full color to separate the departments, shows relief by hachures, and gives longitude from both Greenwich and Washington, as American atlases of the period did. It was made in 1883, in the early years of the Third Republic, when Jules Ferry's laws had just made French primary schooling free and secular.

France occupies the whole sheet, with Paris, Lyon and Marseille as the great centers named on it. The Alps and the Pyrenees form the natural barriers that the hachures pick out along the eastern and southern borders, and neighboring Germany, Switzerland and Italy are labeled beyond the frontier. Paris, on the Seine, was the capital and the largest city, Lyon, at the junction of the Rhône and the Saône, was the second city of silk and banking, and Marseille was the main Mediterranean port, its trade growing since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In 1883 the Statue of Liberty, a French gift to the United States, was rising in a Paris workshop, which gives the sheet a link to its American readers.

An American with French ancestors, a collector of Chicago atlas publishing, or a Francophile planning a first trip will find a fitting gift here, perhaps for a wedding or a graduation. TheMapVault's Morse map of 1856 and Mitchell's of 1860 are earlier American views with insets of neighboring countries, while this Cram sheet is the later and plainer one, concentrating on France alone with clear department outlines and lettering. It was built for classroom and family use rather than for display, which gives it a plain, honest charm. 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.