[Senex, John and Charles Price, the elder (fl. 1697-1730).

large folio (680 x 540mm.), no title or text, printed advertisement leaf pasted inside lower cover, manuscript leaf "A Catalogue of the Maps as they are placed in this Book" pasted inside upper cover, illustration: 34 engraved maps (21 double-page and 13 full-page), contemporary outline colour (cartouches and scales plain), binding: contemporary half calf, occasional creasing, binding somewhat worn 

Shirley, British Library T.SEN-1f

This important atlas, although most commonly attributed to John Senex, had its genesis in the partnership of Charles Price Sr. and John Senex in 1707. Price was apprenticed to John Seller Sr., and then worked in partnership with his heir Jeremiah Seller, until their partnership ended in bankruptcy in 1706. Latterly Seller and Price worked in association (partnership) with John Senex, from separate addresses. After the bankruptcy, Price joined Senex, and worked from his address "next to the Fleece Tavern in Cornhill". In 1707, the partners announced the "New Sett of Correct Maps" (Daily Courant, 24 September 1707), a series of elephant folio maps, printed on two sheets joined, to be printed as completed, with the intention of making up an atlas of twenty maps, with Price the mapmaker and Senex the engraver.

As with many of the atlas projects of this date, the partners were soon in financial trouble, and John Maxwell joined the partnership. Financial woes continued, and this partnership was also dissolved. Price left the partnership, taking some of the map plates, with the rest retained by Senex, to join George Willdey and Timothy Brandreth. Both partners then had new plates engraved to make up a world atlas.

Price, Brandreth and Willdey advertised their set of maps in the Post Man on 23–25 August 1711. Senex and Maxwell advertised their atlas in the Spectator for 1 October 1711.

Willdey’s atlas is appreciably rarer as he seems not to have recovered from the costs of financing his version; Senex, on the other hand, survived the start-up costs, and his atlas, sometimes referred to as The English Atlas, prospered, re-issued by Senex and then his widow Mary Senex into the 1740s, and by the Bowles family, and partners, in the 1750s. Once Maxwell left the partnership, Senex gradually removed existing references to his ex-partners, and following his election to the Royal Society in 1728, added the initials "F.R.S." to his name on various of the maps.

This copy of the Price-Senex atlas is in the mature form attained post-1728, notoriously difficult to date after that point. In this copy there is a broadsheet catalogue of Mary Senex pasted to the inside lower cover. The letterpress catalogue is the earliest form recorded [eclipse of 1738] and refers to maps left unfinished by Senex but being engraved, and so was presumably issued very shortly after Mary Senex took charge of the business.