Arrowsmith's Australian Maps

From the London Atlas of Universal Geography by John Arrowsmith and later Edward Stanford

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Read summaries of the maps and explore the different map states:

Map of the Discoveries in Australia
Van Diemens Land
Discoveries in Western Australia
Eastern portion of Australia
Australia from surveys made by order of the British Government
A new map of South Australia
Maritime portion of South Australia
The South Eastern Portion of Australia
The Colony of Western Australia
Cockburn Sound
King Georges Sound
The District of Adelaide, South Australia
Australia, from Swan River to Shark Bay
Map and chart of the west coast of Australia
South Australia shewing the division into counties of the settled portions of the Province

See which states of the maps are held at individual repositories in Australia and elsewhere:

All Souls College Library, Oxford
Bodleian Library
British Library Map Library
Cambridge University Library
Charles Sturt University Library
Dixson Map Collection, State Library of New South Wales
Fryer Library and Department of Special Collections, University of Queensland
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
Mitchell Map Collection, State Library of New South Wales
Monash University Library
National Library of Australia Map Collection
Queen's College, Oxford
Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society of South Australia Inc.
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries
State Library of Queensland
State Library of South Australia
State Library of Victoria, Maps Collection
State Library of Victoria, Rare Books
State Library of Western Australia
Taylorian Library, Oxford
The University of Melbourne Library, Eastern Resource Centre Map Collection
The University of Melbourne Library, Special Collections
University of Texas Arlington Library

Terms used in this website

Imprint

Imprint is the word used to describe the the three elements of 'Place of publication', 'publisher' and 'date of publication'. This statement is normally found on maps below the map proper in the bottom margin, either centrally placed or to one side.

The imprint date shows when the publisher released the item to the public. However many publishers were less than particular about correcting the imprint on their works and consequently this statement may be misleading and not reflect the actual date of release. John Arrowsmith works are a prime example of this practice.

The only way to verify the accuracy of an imprint is by examining the internal evidence of the map content. In this way it has been possible to distinguish, among Arrowsmith's maps many versions of his maps which ostensibly are identical but which in fact differ from each other. These are described as 'states'.

Date of situation

The date of situation is the date portrayed by the map and may be either a single date or a date span. For example the map Australia from surveys … contains information from the Dutch explorations of the 1600s and also later information from the nineteenth century it therefore has a date span of 1616 to 1838. In contrast its publication date is May 1838.

Date of situation is particularly important for historical maps especially those produced as facsimiles i.e. copy of an original reproduced at a later date, as it is the map content that is significant to the user rather than the date at which the map was published.

State

The expression 'state' of a map is confined to issues of a map made from an engraved or etched plate. On each occasion when the copper plate is altered, either by the addition or removal of information, a new state of the map is produced. The use of the term 'edition' applies only to books but not to maps.

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Acknowledgements

© Arrowsmith's Australian Maps 2012
https://www.asmp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/maps.html
Updated: 29 October 2019