William Smith's 1815 map, a delineation of the strata of England and Wales: Its production, distribution, variants and survival

Abstract

A new survey of surviving copies of William Smith's 1815 map, A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland verifies the 1938 classification of the maps by Joan and Victor Eyles into five series but proposes that their unnumbered and unsigned Series V maps be divided into Series Va and Series Vb. The Series Va maps share characteristics with late Series IV maps while Series Vb maps appear to represent a possible second edition dating from the mid to late 1830s during which Smith was also working on a revised, but never issued, edition of his Memoir. While the paper for almost all copies of the main issue of Smith's map came from the Springfield Mill at Maidstone in Kent and is countermarked 1812, the copies of Series Vb maps examined are on paper made at Rye Mill near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire in the 1830s. The new survey has confidently located about seventy surviving copies of Smith's map, and the likely location of at least thirty additional copies. It is suggested that perhaps as many as 130 to 150 copies of the map survive out of a probable original print-run of about 330 to 350.