Finely engraved map of greater Asia (including Arabia, India and a small portion of northernmost Australia) by John Senex (1678-1740), geographer to Queen Anne and fellow of the Royal Society. As with many maps of the early eighteenth-century the coastline of northern Australia is included.

Finely engraved map of greater Asia (including Arabia, India and a small portion of northernmost Australia) by John Senex (1678-1740), geographer to Queen Anne and fellow of the Royal Society. As with many maps of the early eighteenth-century the coastline of northern Australia is included.

The map was printed for the New General Atlas of 1721, drawing upon information from a wide variety of sources including leading continental cartographers of the era: 'The atlas was claimed to be based on the best authors, particularly Cluverius, Brietius, Cellarius, Blaeu, Baudrand, Hoffman, the two Sansons, Luyts, and other geographers' (Shirley p.942). Senex was widely respected as a pre-eminent scientific publisher of his generation. He also sold globes and instruments and was sometimes employed as a surveyor. Shirley notes that maps in the New General Atlas of 1721 marked as revised by Senex are most probably derived from plates previously owned or published by the prolific London publisher and map-seller Christopher Browne (fl. 1688-1712).

This marvellous map features a most attractive ornamental title to one corner featuring a reclining Ottoman gentleman with a long pipe, a Mongol swordsman and a monkey brandishing a goblet. Curiously, the route of Evert Ysbrandszoon Ides, an envoy of Tsar Peter the Great who travelled to China in 1692 is here clearly engraved.