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Description

A gorgeous wide margin example of Moll's map of Scandinavia, with a large inset map and 5 wonderful vignettes, including a very early example of skiing. A very interesting note on the Laplanders below the vignettes and other notes throughout. This example of the map bears the imprint of John Bowles, Thomas Bowles and Phillip Overton. A fine clean example of this map, which so rarely survives in such nice condition. None of the usual staining at the folds or loss of paper, owing to its having been backed on linen and flattened, likely at some point in the late 19th Century. We purchased this map as part of a group of Moll maps on linen and surmised that it came from a composite atlas of some sort. In any event, a marvelous example of this large format decorative gem.

Herman Moll Biography

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s. 

Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. 

Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.