BLACK, ADAM & CHARLES

 

Adam & Charles Black Maps

Founded by Adam Black (1784 – 1874) with his nephew Charles, in Edinburgh in 1834, Black’s published books on practically every subject, particularly fiction and music. They were publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for over fifty years. They produced a series of guidebooks for both British and continental tourist areas. These contained an extensive number of town and district plans by the likes of W. & A. K. Johnston and John Bartholomew. 

Among their early (1840s) productions were Black’s Travelling Map [later  Road and Railway Travelling Map] of England (and Wales), and corresponding ones for Ireland and Scotland. All went through numerous editions. 

Blacks were the main publishers of maps engraved by the firm of Bartholomew until the 1860s. As noted in the Bartholomew section, in 1862 they published Black’s New Large Map of Scotland, on the quarter-inch scale. 

An advertisement of 1861 for the forthcoming Scottish maps stated

Sheets will be sold separately, and Nos. 4 and 5 are now ready, price 1s 6d each, plain; 2s coloured. Sheets 8 and 9 are nearly finished, and will be ready during the Summer. This Map has been constructed with the greatest care by JOHN BARTHOLOMEW Jun., F.R.G.S., and will contain the most correct information that can be obtained, and the Publishers believe that it will now supply what has long been a desideratum, A GOOD MAP OF SCOTLAND, on a scale sufficiently large to be distinct and useful for all ordinary purposes.

The full countrywide map was advertised in September 1862. The individual maps, in a dark green board cover, gave ‘Black’s’ on the cover, but ‘Drawn & Engraved by J. Bartholomew Edinburgh F.R.G.S.’ at the head of the map. Sheet prices were increased to 2s and 2s 6d coloured by 1864 (and possibly from first sale); also available on cloth at 3s 6d per sheet. ‘Coloured’ meant that county boundaries were highlighted, a different colour for each: originally a pale tint of the same colour was applied to the county itself. Railways were highlighted in pink, water features in pale blue. Hachuring ‘printed from a separate copper plate’ in a light brown was used to denote landform, with heights shown for the principal hill summits. Roads, all uncoloured, were divided into main, secondary and tracks, the last indicated by a narrow single line Later editions subdivided the minor routes into more classes: continuous double line, broken double line, continuous single line and broken single line. Because the maps were integral part of the national map there was no overlap between the sheets. By 1878 an additional special sheet for Perthshire, formed from the four sheets that included parts of that county, was on sale at the standard price of 2s 6d. By 1890 the sheet prices had been drastically reduced, to 6d on paper, 1s on cloth. Within England and Wales the Scottish maps were sold through G. Philip & Son, and probably other publishers.

Black’s seem not to have promoted the individual maps very strongly, even in their own guide books. Despite this, the twelve Scottish sheets, much revised, were still on sale in 1910 or later. The full Scotland map can be viewed on https://maps.nls.uk/joins/759.html.

Whilst the maps cover southern and central Scotland competently, the mapping of certain Highland areas was much cruder, as can be seen by (for example) comparing that for the Oban area with a more modern map on the same scale, given above in the Bartholomew section. This was because the Ordnance Survey had not fully covered Scotland at the time of the map’s publication, and so reliance had to be put on other sources.

The equivalent Black’s Large Map of England, of 1866, became the basis of the Bartholomew quarter-inch maps sold by W.H. Smith and others, - The Pocket Series - as well as Houlston & Sons’ Handy Maps, and later that for Bartholomew’s own England & Wales series issued in 1893. Several examples of these will be found in the Bartholomew section.

The England (and Wales) map was comprised of sixteen sections of individual engraved plates, each available as an individual map sheet. Like the Scottish map, the individual sections went on sale as they were completed, and so before the full map. As can be seen from the following index plan, some individual sheets showed more sea than land. Sheet 3 showed only a few square miles of Cumberland: the Scottish mapping was only skeletal, as was the English mapping on the equivalent Scottish maps. As first issued by Black’s the separate sheets were priced at 2/6d in cloth case, mounted on cloth and coloured, the same as the Scottish sheets. By 1891 prices of both series had been reduced to 6d on paper, 1/- on cloth. 

The sheet boundaries of both series of individual maps reflected the boundaries of the engraved plates that went to the making of the full map, rather than being optimised for individual sale. Sheet 3 of England was nearly all Scotland, shown in a very skeletal format. Scottish sheets extending into England similarly gave only sparse detail south of the border. By contrast, Sheet 1 of Scotland gave full coverage of that part of Northern Ireland falling on it. The maps, both complete and in sheet form, were also published by Abel Heywood of Manchester (c. 1877). In the 1880s the map series (“Indispensable to the Cyclist”) was also sold by William Collins, with Sheet 1 omitted and a warning that Scottish areas on Sheet 3 were in less detail. Prices were 2/- in case, 2/6 ditto on cloth. This original Black’s map for England and Wales does not seem to be available for browsing on the internet.

The sixteen sheets formed corresponding sheets in Fullarton’s Imperial Map, or Atlas, of England & Wales published in 1868. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as the Imperial maps.

Like those for the equivalent Scottish series, after initial promotion advertisements for the maps were largely dropped from Black’s own numerous guidebooks, whilst in the 1870s these books often contained an advertisement for the W. H. Smith ‘Pocket’ maps derived from them. The history of these derivatives, and the later Bartholomew quarter-inch maps, are given under Bartholomew. 

As with these quarter-inch maps, Bartholomew’s first series of half-inch maps of Scotland, 1875 onwards, were sold under Black’s name, as well as those of London publishers, rather than the engraver’s own. For subsequent history of the quarter- and half-inch maps see under Bartholomew.

As remarked, Black’s produced a great number of guidebooks covering tourist areas and regions of Britain and Europe from the 1840s onwards, generally with green covers, changing to red after WW1. They were extensive users of Bartholomew maps in these guides, though these were sometimes revised by, and attributed to, A. & W. K. Johnston. Black’s Guide to Scotland, a tome increasing in bulk with each successive edition, provides an extensive collection of contemporary mapping. Indeed, extensive extracts from the 1862 quarter-inch base map were included in the post-WW1 edition, still on sale in the late 1920s, with few corrections or changes other than the addition of railways constructed in the intervening sixty years. Another anachronism of these later editions was extensive reference to road conditions for cycling: other guidebooks had long before dropped such references in favour of motoring information.

Most of Black’s other maps originated in atlases and comprised individual counties, so were on a relatively small scale for cycling nor geared towards them. However, in 1884 the firm was advertising a quarter-inch map of Killarney, an English Lake District map (19” by 14”, 2/6d on linen, 3½m = 1”, also advertised 1857) and a London & Environs map. But they do not seem to have themselves promoted any cycling-orientated maps in their long later history.

In 1891 the firm relocated its headquarters to 4-6 Soho Square, London. It is now part of the Bloomsbury Publishing Group.

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