Travel and Atlases

Rare Travel Books at Forum Auctions

The Rare Travel Books & Atlases department has overseen some amazing auctions over the years, including single-owner collections and exceptional single works of historical importance. These auctions include some of the very earliest printed books, replete with wood-engraved vignette maps & illustrations; multi volume sets detailing the the great voyages of discovery from the 17th & 18th centuries, enhanced by copious folding engraved maps; important editions on or by the great explorers and adventurers of Victorian period; 19th & 20th century signed first editions by mountaineers, polar explorers and women travellers, all the way through to rare modern photobooks. Some of the important travellers and explorers that appear in our Rare Travel Books auctions include George Anson, Captain James Cook, Samuel Baker, Henry Morton Stanley, Richard Francis Burton, Anna Brassey, Roald Amundsen, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Freya Stark and Robert Byron.

Rare Atlases at Forum Auctions

Atlases neatly straddle both the cartographic and bibliographic worlds. The first printed Atlases date back to the 15th century, commencing with the 1477 Bologna edition of Ptolemy's Geographia. One can only imagine the impact such compilations of engraved maps would have had on those lucky enough to view them around the time of publication. Incunable Atlases are extremely uncommon, but other Rare Atlases from the 16th, 17th & 18th centuries do appear at auction more often. Famous British examples include Waghenaer's Mariners Mirrour (1588), an essential early guide for English mariners; Saxton's Atlas of England and Wales (1579) and Speed's Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (1627).

The colonial and industrial ambitions of Britain and other countries in the 19th century saw an exponential rise in the number of Atlases produced around this time, leveraging the advances in printing technology to create highly informative Atlases ranging from educational Atlases for schools through to specialist demographic and geological works.