Atlas Maior

The Atlas Maior is the final version of Joan Blaeu's atlas, published in Amsterdam between 1662 and 1672, in Latin (11 volumes), French (12 volumes), Dutch (9 volumes), German (10 volumes) and Spanish (10 volumes), containing 594 maps and around 3,000 pages of text. It was the largest and most expensive book published in the seventeenth century. Earlier, much smaller versions, titled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive, Atlas Novus, were published from 1634 onwards.

Somewhere around 1604 Willem Blaeu settled down in Amsterdam and opened a shop on the Damrak, where he produced and sold scientific instruments, globes and maps. He was also a publisher, editor and engraver.

In 1629, Willem Blaeu bought the copperplates of several dozens of maps from Jodocus Hondius II's widow. Afterwards, he published an Atlantis Appendix to Mercator's atlas in 1630, containing 60 maps, but no text. The next year a new edition was published, with 98 maps and descriptive text in Latin.

Willem and his son Joan Blaeu made a public announcement in an Amsterdam newspaper that they would publish their own full atlas in 1634. Their first atlas was completed in 1635 and appeared in four different versions: Novus Atlas (German edition, 208 maps in two volumes), Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive, Atlas Novus (Latin edition, 207 maps in two volumes; title refers to Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum), Toonneel des Aerdrycks (Dutch edition, also 207 maps in two volumes) and finally Theatre du Monde ou Nouvel Atlas (French edition, 208 maps in two volumes (like the German edition)).

After his father's death in 1638, Joan continued to rework and expand the atlas. A three volume edition was published from 1640 onwards. Joan later published the Atlas of England with maps of John Speed, the Atlas of Scotland (1654) with maps of Timothy Pont and Robert Gordon, and Martino Martini's Novus Atlas Sinensis (Atlas of China, 1655), which were added as respectively the fourth, fifth and sixth volumes of Blaeu's Atlas Novus.

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