"Cambridgeshire", Moule, Thomas

Thomas Moule (1784 – 1851) was a writer, bookseller, publisher, topographer and a scholar in heraldry. His varied career led him in 1830 to produce a series of English county map based on his own travel. He wrote that he has “with expensive diligence personally visited every county in England, excepting only Devonshire and Cornwall.” His maps were delicately engraved on steel in a highly decorative style, featured such embellishments as armorial bearings, figures, fancy borders and vignettes of local interest. This amount of ornamentation in mapmaking was unusual for the period as most mapmaker’s were instead creating scientifically accurate, austere works. His series of county maps were originally published in separate sections for each county (1830-32), then subsequently published in a two-volume work: The English Counties Delineated…, (1836). Beginning in 1841, the maps appeared in Barclays Complete and Universal English Dictionary.

This attractive steel-engraved map provides detailed information of the cities, towns, roads, canals and parks in Cambridgeshire. Surrounding the map are vignettes of Wimpole and Ely Cathedral and an elaborate border with coats of arms, a king and a priest.

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Condition: B+

A nice example with a couple of faint spots of foxing, trimmed at top by the bookbinder with minor loss of the border, and light toning along the edges of the sheet.