Map of Mogulistan or Indostan the Empire of the Great Mogul

1709

Original hand-coloured copper engraving on paper

9.75 x 7.75 in (25 x 20 cm)

This map was part of The Compleat Geographer: or, the Chorography and Topography of all the known parts of the Earth, printed for Awnsham and John Churchill at the Black Swan in Paternoster Row and Timothy Childe at the White Hart at the West End of St. Paul's Churchyard.

Herman Moll (about 1654-1732) was a major London mapmaker in the first part of the eighteenth century. Moll was most likely born in 1654 in Bremen, Germany. He relocated to London to avoid the Scanian Wars. His first job was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the English Atlas, a disastrous project that placed Pitt in debtor's jail. Moll engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price business, among others. In the early 1680s, he published his first unique maps, and by the 1690s, he had established his own store.

Moll's work rapidly helped him become a part of a club that gathered at Jonathan's Coffee House on Number 20 Exchange Alley in Cornhill, where speculators convened to trade shares. The scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the novelists Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually talented pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers, and William Hacke were all members of Moll's group. Moll obtained a considerable lot of sensitive information from these sources, which he put in his maps.

He spent his early years working for various publishers before publishing his first book, A System of Geography, in 1701. Throughout his career, he published hundreds of geographies, atlases, and histories, as well as several sheet maps. Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine published from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described are two of his most recognized works (1715-54). He also regularly created maps for novels, notably Dampier's and Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

Moll later made accurate maps of North America to aid in the expansion of British influence on the continent. Both France and Britain utilised his maps, but the charting and labelling were meant to help Britain acquire territory.

Moll passed away in 1732. After his death, his plates were most likely given on to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles.

This work will be shipped unframed.

NON-EXPORTABLE