Holland Map 1832 Dower Descriptive Atlas Print - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague

John Dower drew this map of Holland, published in 1832 by W. S. Orr and by W. & R. Chambers in A General Descriptive Atlas of the Earth, with a short account of each country written by W. M. Higgins. The sheet measures 22 by 27 centimeters. The atlas holds 51 maps from original drawings, with commentary on each country's geographical features, chief towns and cities, population and general statistics. The engravers named are Russell, Bradbury & Evans and Orr & Smith. The catalog calls it an unrecorded Dower atlas, and it has an unusual sheet of mountains and rivers facing the title page. The sheet was printed in London by Bradbury and Evans, whose Whitefriars press also handled many books of the period, and the atlas bears Higgins's name as author of the descriptions.

Twelve of the maps appear later in lithographic form in Dower's Short Atlas for schools, and the maps were issued again, updated, in his General Atlas of 1854. That long life shows how useful the plain, well-ordered drawings were to teachers and students. The same atlas held maps of Australia and Tasmania, which later scholars have noted, although they misdated them and did not name this atlas as their source. A sheet of Holland in such a book was a compact summary of the country, and Dower's careful lettering makes its towns and waterways easy to follow.

Collectors of English atlas maps from the 1830s, a family with roots in Holland, or a reader who likes rare atlas sources will find a distinctive gift here. TheMapVault's Darton sheet of 1811 shows the same country in the Napoleonic age, whereas this Dower map comes twenty years later in a plainer descriptive style. 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.