Chapter 12 - Atlas Maritimus

Summary

Chapter 12 has to do with Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis (1728), a major compilation on nautical matters produced with the support of Edmond Halley. This was originally planned as a means of advertising a new projection system for maps, but over the course of its preparation it evolved into a pioneering attempt to go beyond the narrow function of most previous atlases, and to provide a work of economic geography that would be of special use to the mercantile community. The figures behind the enterprise included William Taylor, the publisher of Robinson Crusoe in 1719; the mathematician Henry Wilson; the engraver John Harris; and the mapmaker John Senex. Previous scholarship suggested that Defoe, with his long record as a student of trade, had a hand in its composition. This is the first attempt to specify the degree to which the Atlas is indebted to the Tour for almost all of its coverage of Britain, and to set out the ways in which it is made up of naked citation, metaphrase and paraphrase of Defoe’s original. Extensive evidence is cited to indicate that Defoe himself edited this recension of his work