1853 Mitchell Map of China
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Description: An extremely attractive example of S. A. Mitchell Sr.’s 1853 map of China. Covers from Chinese Tartary south to Hainan and east to Korea and Formosa. Chinese provinces are color coded and numbered. Surrounded by the green border common to Mitchell maps from the 1850s. Prepared by S. A. Mitchell for issued as plate no. 70 in the 1853 edition of his New Universal Atlas. Dated and copyrighted, “Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Thomas Cowperthwait & Co., in the Clerks office of the District court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.”
Date: 1850 (dated)
Source: A New Universal Atlas Containing Maps of the various Empires, Kingdoms, States and Republics Of The World. (1853 issue)
References: Rumsey 0537.068 (1846 edition). Phillips (Atlases) 6103-67.
Cartographer: Samuel Augustus Mitchell Senior began his map publishing career in the early 1830s. Having worked as a school teacher, Mitchell was frustrated with the low quality and inaccuracy of school texts of the period. His first maps were an attempt to rectify this problem. In the next 20 years Mitchell would become the most prominent American map publisher of the mid-19th century. Mitchell worked with prominent engravers H. S. Tanner and H. N. Burroughs before attaining the full copyright on his maps in 1847. In 1849 Mitchell teamed up with printer Cowperthwait & Company to produce the Mitchell's Universal Atlas and the Mitchell's General Atlas. In the late 1850s most of the Mitchell copyrights were bought by Desilver and Co. who continued to publish his maps, many with modified borders and color schemes, until Mitchell's son, Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr, entered the picture. S.A. Mitchell Jr. purchased most of the copyrights back from Desilver and, from 1860 on, published his own New General Atlas. The younger Mitchell became as prominent as his father and published atlases well into the late 1880s when most of the copyrights were again sold and the Mitchell firm closed its doors for the final time. Click here for a list of rare maps from Samuel Augustus Mitchell.
Size: Printed area measures 14.5 x 11.5 inches (36.83 x 29.21 centimeters)
Condition: Very good condition. Overall toning and minor offsetting. Blank on verso.
Code: China-mitchell-1850 (to order by phone call: 646-320-8650)
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