Boston Rare MapsSpecializing in antique American maps & prints
![John Seller, A Chart of the Coast of AMERICA from New found Land to Cape Cod by Iohn Seller Hyrographer [sic] to the king. [London: John Seller, ca.1674]](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BRM3678-Seller-Coast-of-North-America-1674_lowres-150x150.jpg)
Very scarce chart of the coasts of New England and the Canadian Maritimes from John Seller’s Atlas Maritimus, the best depiction of the region then available. Published in 1674, at a transitional moment in the history of the English colonies in North America. The chart depicts the coast from eastern Long Island round to Newfoundland […]
This important work provides crucial information on eastern New York and southern New England. The main chart depicts the coast from Rensselaer Hook in New Jersey to roughly the “elbow” of Cape Cod, with extensive soundings and notations of shoals and other hazards. Much detail is given for Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay and the waters […]
![John Thornton, Rob[er]t Morden and Phillip Lea, A NEW MAP OF NEW ENGLAND NEW YORK NEW IARSEY PENSILVANIA MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA. London, ca. 1685.](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/brm0975-thornton-ne-ny-nj-pa-md-va-1685-150x150.jpg)
The rare first obtainable state of the finest general map of England’s American colonies to date. This most important map is one of the earliest to adopt Augustine Herrman’s cartography for Virginia and Maryland. To the North it includes one of the earliest depictions of the Pennsylvania colony (est. 1681), the first printed chart of […]
Published around 1700, this Kriegs Spiel, or “The War Game,” is a scarce and attractive sheet of playing cards designed to educate young people in the elements of conducting a military campaign. The sheet comprises 53 engraved panels numbered sequentially. All but one is a playing card using the French suits, each bearing an illustration of a military maneuver or fortification […]
![Zacharias Landteck, ZACHARIAS LANDTECKS Neu inventierte GEOGRAPHISHE UNIVERSAL-ZEIG UND SCHLAG-UHR[:] ZACHARIAS LANDTECKS Nieuw Uytgevonde WEERELD-BEELDIGH WYS EN SLAG WERK. [Nüremburg: Johann Baptist Homann, ca. 1705?]](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/BRM3118-Landteck-Schlag-Uhr_lowres-150x150.jpg)
An interesting, attractive and very rare print depicting a remarkable universal clock purportedly developed by Nuremburg clock- and watchmaker Zacharias Landteck (1670-1740). Not to be confused with the vastly more common version attributing the clock to map- and instrument maker Johann Baptist Homann. The print depicts one face of Landteck’s clock, flanked left and right […]
The first state of Guillame de l’Isle’s 1718 Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, one of the monuments in the mapping of North America. The map features the most advanced treatment of the Mississippi River watershed to date, a wealth of ethnographic information, the first mention of Texas on a printed map, […]
![Homann, Joh[annes] Baptista, Nova Anglia Septentrionali Americae… Nuremberg, [ca. 1716/ ca. 1730].](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BRM3606-Homann-Nova-Anglia_lowres-scaled-e1595348375169-150x150.jpg)
A most decorative and geographically intriguing map of New England, issued by Nuremburg mapmaker Johann Baptist Homann in or around 1730. Propelled by economic hardship, religious persecution and repeated warfare, in the late 17th century waves of German settlers began the first of many waves of immigration to America. Through the end of the 18th […]
An extraordinarily rare, interesting and sumptuously decorated allegorical map of the Island of Felicity, produced for one of the first Masonic orders to admit women. Background The map was designed and printed for l’Ordre de la Félicité. This short-lived Order was a quasi-Masonic secret society established in France in the early 1740s by Louis-Joseph Scipio La […]
![Eman[uel] Bowen, Geographer to his Majesty, A NEW MAP of Georgia, with Part of CAROLINA, FLORIDA and LOUISIANA. Drawn from Original Draughts, assisted by the most approved Maps and Charts. [London: Thomas Woodward et al., 1748].](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/BRM3756-Bowen-New-Map-of-Georgia-1737_lowres-scaled-e1615389846787-150x150.jpg)
An early, important English map of the Georgia colony, chartered in 1732, here depicted with its borders extending to the Mississippi River and presumably on to the Pacific, although actual physical settlement was then limited to a narrow band along the Atlantic coast. The original charters of the English colonies in North America established boundaries […]
![[Untitled hand fan with scenes celebrating La Salle’s expedition and attempted settlement in Texas, including a map of the area between the Trinity and Colorado Rivers.] England or France, ca. 1718-1750.](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/BRM4056-Texas_LaSalle-hand-fan_recto_lowres-scaled-e1637030851290-150x150.jpg)
A remarkably lovely 18th-century hand fan bearing many illustrations and a curious map of Texas, all celebrating the final, fateful expedition of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643 – 1687). A stylized chronology of La Salle’s final expedition The front of the fan features a dramatic scene that can be divided into three chronologically […]