Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Cartography: The Ideal and Its History and Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. Mary Sponberg Pedley is assistant curator of maps at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-century France and England, also published by Chicago, and Bel et Utile: The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers.
It is brilliant, continuing the already very high standards of what is the most significant series in cartographic history ever published. . . . A must for anyone interested in maps or the Enlightenment, and a work that whets the appetite for the next volume due out, that on the nineteenth century. -- The Critic (UK) The value of The History of Cartography to those interested in maps has long been a given, and one further affirmed by the project's scale, which is unlikely to be matched. The importance of an understanding of maps to broader intellectual, cultural, and political currents emerges clearly, as does the very delight of maps. Indeed, as an aesthetic product, the two parts, each substantial volumes themselves, of this one 'volume, ' with the total weight almost sixteen pounds, are a triumph. -- The New Criterion