Dunn was a career educator in mathematics and highly respected in his field. So much so, that around 1774, he was made mathematical examiner at the British East India Company, where he immediately began to expand on their sailing directories. Between 1774 and 1786, he published several important works for the Company.



Separately, in 1774, he also first compiled his "New Atlas of the Mundane System, or of Geography and Cosmography, describing the Heavens and the Earth". It was published by the commercially astute Robert Sayer and was remarkably successful as it was issued on multiple occasions throughout the late eighteenth and into the early nineteenth century.



The map is drawn on Mercator's Projection and, in this issue of 1794, shows the route of all three of Cook's voyages. This illustrates one of the reasons of its success as Sayer and Dunn must have been continually updating the maps within the atlas. The 1774 edition would only have shown the first voyage while there are also records of early 19th century examples which show the discovery of the Bass Straits separating New Holland (Australia) and van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Other notable voyages shown include those by Bouvet into the South Pacific, Bouganville, Byron and Captain Phipps, later Lord Mulgrave who in 1773 sailed to the North Atlantic on another attempt to find the Northwest Passage. He reached Spitzbergen or modern Svalbard before returning. The voyage is notable for providing the first reliable and detailed European description of a polar bear and for having a young midshipman named Horatio Nelson among its crew.



The geographical portrayal of North America, especially in the west, does not show a great advance in its interior with one major exception. A small note on its northern coastline states simply "The Sea 1772". This refers to an extraordinary journey by Samuel Hearne between 1770-72. He explored the interior of northern Canada before being the first European to reach the Arctic Ocean on the North American continent. Thus he finally laid to rest the centuries old theory of a Northwest Passage bisecting northern Canada from the lower latitudes of Hudson's Bay.



Among the multiple other routes and notes on the map is an unobtrusive but intriguing tiny section of coastline south of Tierra del Fuego captioned as "Land Seen by Theodore Gerrard in 1599". Theodore Gerrard is the Anglicised name of the Dutch merchant and adventurer Dirk Gerritsz Pomp, who among other achievements, was the first Dutchman to reach China and Japan. The five ship expedition to which the map refers was led by Admiral Jacque Mahu. Pomp was given command of one of the ships and when blown off course south of the Magellan Straits, he sighted a mountainous land. It is believed these were the islands of South Shetland. If this was the case, it is the first physical sighting of the isles of Antarctica by an European. "Gerrard's Land" as it is also known, is a feature on several other maps of the 18th century. This same expedition also sailed with a more famous member. One of its pilots was the Englishman Will Adams, immortalised in James Clavell's novel "Shogun".



The example offered for sale is the 1794 edition published by Robert Sayer's successors, Robert Laurie and James Whittle. It is in full original colour.

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