Delisle, Jacques Nicolas (1688-1768).

folio (530 x 318mm.), 16, [2]pp., letterpress tables, parallel text in Latin and French, illustration: 20 engraved maps, comprising 19 regional maps and folding general map (on 2 sheets), hand-coloured in outline, large engraved illustration of signs and symbols on last leaf of text, binding: nineteenth-century half calf by Hatton of Manchester with his ticket, spine faded and corners bumped

Bagrow-Castner II, pp.177-253; Phillips, Atlases 4060; Shirley, British Library T.DEL-2a, b and c

 

the first complete printed atlas of russia.

Jacques Nicolas Delisle, brother of Guillaume Delisle, was invited by Peter the Great to survey the vast empire of Imperial Russia. Initially accompanied by his step-brother Louis, in 1726 the two Parisians journeyed to Russia (now under the reign of Catherine I) to start their surveys. At first Delisle also worked with Ivan Kirilov, with whom he co-founded the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences. However, the two men did not always see eye to eye, and Kirilov went on to produce an incomplete atlas which was published in 1734, before the French team had finished their surveys. Kirilov died in 1737, eight years before the eventual publication of Delisle's atlas.

The Atlas russicus is effectively in two parts: the first covering European Russia in thirteen sheets, the second covering Siberia in six sheets. On publication in 1745 Russian cartography came of age.

A presentation copy of Delisle's Projet de la mesure de la terre en Russie (St Petersburg, 1737), inscribed by the author to Edmond Halley, was also in the Macclesfield library (Macclesfield Science D-H, lot 610).