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Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, New Edition, Vol. III

by Dr Peter van der Krogt. Westrenen, Tuurdijk - 't Goy-Houten (NL): HES & De Graaf, 2003. Two volumes, 970 pages, ISBN 90-6194-448-1

You may remember that Peter van der Krogt had started the monumental task of re-editing Koeman's standard work of reference, now in some respects outdated due to recent research, when he published the first volume on the Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius atlases in 1997, followed by Volume II in 2000 on atlases by Willem Janzs and Joan Blaeu.

This new publication comes in two parts :

• Volume III A covers all editions of Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, De Jode's Speculum Orbis Terrarum, the smaller atlases (Epitome based on Ortelius, the Caert-Thresoor) and other atlases published in the Low Countries up to ca 1650.
• Volume III B is devoted to the various eitions of Mercator's Atlas Minor, atlases of the XVII Provinces by Goos, van den Keere, Colom, Verbist; regional atlases of the Americas (Wytfliet), of Italy (Jodocus Hondius Jr.), of the British Isles (van den Keere) followed by a chapter on Cosmographies (Magini, Honterus). The last 270 pages contain a series of selected map illustrations from small atlases, and the map descriptions of all maps recorded in the two Volumes in catalogue form, many with small illustrations, an extremely useful appendix for the map collector and a feature we have become used to consulting extensively in the previous editions.

This cartobibliography with 2 500 entries also covers the lesser known Dutch atlases and will be especially welcomed by those interested in the smaller maps from the Epitome and the Mercator-based mini-atlases by Hondius, Janssonius and Cloppenburch about which the literature is particularly scarce. With this third volume the revised edition of Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici includes all terrestrial atlases published in the Netherlands up to the middle of the 17^th century, except the town books which are the subject of the fourth Volume.

HES & De Graaf Publishers (Hesselink previously) have launched this project under subscription: you had to sign up for the whole series of ten volumes to obtain a copy, and you paid each volume when it was published, without knowing in advance how much it would cost (EUR 425.00 each of the first two volumes). Volume III costs EUR 1150.00 which came as a bit of a surprise. Let's hope that the following seven volumes (on Town Books, Composite Atlases, Atlases of the 18^th century, Pilot Guides up to ca 1650, Pilot Guides and Sea Atlases, Van Keulen's Sea-Atlases and Pilot Guides, and Atlases of the 19^th and 20^th century) will be more affordable.

For anyone seriously interested in the history of cartography, this is another must. If you cannot acquire it for your own library, then you should be able to consult it in most of the Libraries or Archives with a Map Section.

by Wulf Bodenstein

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