Tasmania Map 1851 Illustrated Atlas Print - Hobart, Launceston, Burnie

This 1851 map of Van Diemen's Island, or Tasmania, was published in London by John Tallis and engraved for R. Montgomery Martin's Illustrated Atlas, the work Tallis put together for the year of the Great Exhibition. Tallis, who was among the last of the great decorative mapmakers, relied on the engraver John Rapkin for the fine line work, and his atlas was later reissued by the London Printing and Publishing Company with the Tallis name intact. This copy is a full-color example whose character comes from its vignettes of Hobart Town, the residence of the Van Diemen's Land Company's agent, Circular Head and two other scenes. It is a regional map of the island, drawn in 1851 when transportation of convicts was still under way and the colonists' attention was divided between the island's farms and the new goldfields across Bass Strait.

Hobart Town, on the Derwent River at the foot of Mount Wellington, had been the seat of government since 1804, and its convict-built warehouses and churches stood along the waterfront. Circular Head, on the north-west coast, belonged to the Van Diemen's Land Company, which held a grant of about 350,000 acres there from 1825 and kept an agent in residence. Port Arthur, on the Tasman Peninsula, was the harshest of the penal stations, and Launceston, at the head of the Tamar, was the northern center of trade. Bass Strait, to the north, was the sea road to Port Phillip, and the sheet thus belongs to an island whose economy, labor and law all rested on convict transportation until 1853.

A Tasmanian family with convict ancestry, anyone planning a trip to Hobart or Launceston, or a collector of decorative atlas maps would find a thoughtful gift here, perhaps for a milestone birthday. TheMapVault's Teesdale and Dower map of 1831 shows the same island in plainer colors without vignettes, and the Tallis sheet is the richer mid-century version with its scenes. TheMapVault also lists a second example of the same Tallis map, with Hobart, Launceston and Devonport as its lead cities, so the two sit side by side as alternate copies. 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.