An attractive children's educational map of the World

An attractive children's educational map of the World

The map is based on the work of the Abbé Gaultier, an educationalist originally from Piedmont, who had settled in France in 1780 and later fled the revolution to London. Gaultier began publishing his works in the late eighteenth century, and his philosophy of teaching geographical knowledge through games was very influential for game-makers and educational publishers on the continent and in England. He died in 1818 but his Geography continued to be reprinted. In 1815 it was "collated with the author's last Paris edition by Jehoshaphat Aspin", a cartographer. (see Juliana Bayfield, 'Games of Virtue and Learning', The La Trobe Journal, 1997). Aspin seems to have produced the first edition of this work in 1821.

Aspin's versions of the maps evidently had some success as an entertainment and teaching aid. They were originally issued as a portfolio or atlas, which included maps of many different parts of the world, some blank, as here, and others with geographical information added. Although bibliographical information is a little sketchy, similar English editions appear to have been published in 1821, 1823, 1829 and 1838. This particular map seems to derive from the "fourth" edition, the Atlas adapted to the Abbe? Gaultier's Geographical Games of 1838, in which some maps were dated as early as 1832.

All editions of the full atlas are now very scarce, with the 1838 edition being the only one held in Australia, at the National Library of Australia.