BOWEN, Emanuel (1694-1767) and Thomas BOWEN (1733-1790). A New & Accurate Map of the North Pole... London: William Innys,... 1747].

A new & accurate map of the North Pole, with all the countries hitherto discovered situated near or adjacent to it, as well as some others more remote. Drawn from the latest and best authorities and regulated by astronoml. observatns. By Eman. Bowen. [London: Printed for William Innys, Richard Ware, Aaron Ward, J. and P. Knapton, John Clarke, T. Longman and T. Shewell, Thomas Osborne, Henry Whitridge ... M.DCC.XLVII].

Double-page engraved map (17 4/8 x 19 4/8 inches, full margins, showing the plate mark). Fine map of the North Pole and surrounding hemisphere on a polar projection, the title within a fine rococo cartouche top centre, and showing northern Europe, Greenland and northern North America, with explanatory text in the margins both sides of the of the hemisphere (a bit browned).

Provenance: with copies 19th-century manuscript notes in the margins, including extracts from Sir John Ross' "Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage and of a Residence in the Arctic Regions during the years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833". 

A fine map of the North Pole from Bowen's "A complete system of geography", London: Printed for William Innys, 1757, the margins filled with notes from Ross's voyage in search of a North-West Passage regarding the great cold and impenetrable ice of Prince Regents Inlet, not very far from where Sir John Franklin went missing about 15 years later, and where one of his ships has just been found.

Emanuel Bowen's contribution to eighteenth-century world and British atlases is substantial. Using contemporary sources, he published and drew maps for the "Complete System of Geography" (2 vols., 1744-47), "The Maps and Charts to the Modern Part of the Universal History" (published in 1766 under Thomas Kitchin's name), the celebrated maps for John Harris's "Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca" (1744-48), and all twenty-two new plates in the final edition (1754) of Patrick Gordon's "Geography Anatomized", the county maps in his "Large English Atlas" (1760) the first to cover England and Wales on a large scale, and subsequently reduced by Bowen and Kitchin for their "Royal English Atlas" (ca.1763) and then by Emanuel and Thomas Bowen for "Atlas Anglicanus" (1767-8), published after Emanuel Bowen's death by Kitchin. "All three works are characterized by detailed texts in the spaces surrounding the maps and by elegant rococo decoration, which became the hallmark of his engraving" (Iolo Roberts and Menai Roberts for DNB). P-Maps, p. 117 (1752 ed.); NMM p.356; M&B p 166. For more information about this map, or a warm welcome to see it and other maps in our gallery at 72nd Street, NYC, please contact Caleb Kiffer.

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