Edward Wells was a Professor of Geography and Mathematics at Christchurch College, Oxford. One of his students was the eleven year old William, Duke of Gloucester, the only child of Queen Anne of England.



In 1701, Wells published his "Treatise of Antient and Present Geography" a work with maps designed both as a guide and a teaching aid. The first half of the work contained 'antient' maps or maps whose geography and knowledge were gleaned from classical geographers such as Ptolemy, Mela and Strabo while the latter half contained 'modern' maps as known in the late 17th century. Both sets were relatively simplistic with little detail and quite crude but they proved popular at the time and the atlas was published in several issues.



This map is Wells's rendition of the ancient world and is a curious mixture. Whereas the orthodox method of portraying a map of the ancient world was to design a map on a Ptolemaic projection, Wells changes this idea. He draws a map as a double hemisphere with sketchy outlines of the continents as well as Australia and New Zealand and labels the areas that would have been known to classical geographers. He uses Latin for this nomenclature and English to instruct the reader about the rest of the map. The whole globe is also divided into temperature zones, a division first introduced by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela. In contrast, his 'modern' double hemisphere map of the world is only in English and has greater detail in Asia, Australia, the Far East and most importantly, in the New World.



On this map, Wells's postulation about North America is its most memorable feature. In a note in English, he states that the New World was supposedly unknown to the Ancients but that there are theories that the lands of America could have been the islands of Atlantis as first mentioned by Plato. The note on South America is an instruction to aid in differentiating those lands known and unknown to the Ancients by the absence or presence of shading.



This is not the first time that the concept of Atlantis on North America has been either drawn or mentioned on maps but it is probably the first time that an English mapmaker has labelled it as such.
It seemed to fit current thought and a small number of later map makers adopted this theory, drawing their own maps of the ancient world showing North America as Atlantis.



Aesthetically, the map is influenced by the Dutch School, with the two hemispheres artistically super imposed upon a large panorama with the sky and clouds on the upper part while the lower bears a series of scenes including a geography master and pupil, obviously an allusion to William and Wells himself on the lower right, a large dedication to William with the royal coat of arms and a figure representing Britannia in the centre and a lower left scene of discovery with three ships anchored off shore and landing boats arriving on land, possibly for the first time.

An unusual curiosity.

Coloured. [Shirley 608] [ WLD4232]