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

Among their early (1840s) productions to interest us 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 into the cycling era. 

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. This was followed, in 1866, by an equivalent map of England and Wales. In their individual sheet format both these productions would become cycling mainstay into the twentieth century, though the England & Wales series was to be overshadowed by more localised maps derived from them sold by publishers such as Houlston and especially W. H. Smith. 

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 these half-inch maps see under Bartholomew.

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.

The Scottish Quarter-inch Series


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.

A. & C. Black seem not to have promoted the individual maps very strongly, even in their own guide books. Despite this, the 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, extracts of both given on the Bartholomew page. 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.

Pre-eminent among the numerous guidebooks published by A. & C. Black was Black’s Guide to Scotland, a tome increasing in bulk with each successive edition, all providing 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 this late edition was extensive reference to road conditions for cycling: other guidebooks had dropped such references in favour of motoring information by this date.



The England (and Wales) map followed on from the Scottish map and was to the same format. It was comprised of sixteen sections of individual engraved plates, each going on sale as an individual map sheet as they were completed during 1865-66. 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 on this 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.

Lest it be thought that what was being produced by Bartholomew was a contemporary plan from a bespoke survey, it was derived from existing maps; probably individual county maps (of which several excellent examples would have been available), the Cary/Cruchley half-inch maps (as described under Gall & Inglis), and such Ordnance Survey maps or trigonometric information as was becoming available .

Like the Scottish maps, there was no road hierarchy indicated, save main roads shown slightly wider. The remainder might be anything: in the Lake District these included all the main inter-valley pony tracks.

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

The original quarter-inch England & Wales sectional maps were marketed by several publishers in addition to A. & C. Black. Abel Heywood of Manchester advertised the series, as well as a derived map of North Wales. In the 1880s William Collins was advertising them (“Indispensable to the Cyclist”), though omitting Sheet 1 and warning that Sheet 3 showed only limited information within Scotland alongside its fragment of Cumberland. Likewise, The  Road Book of England & Wales (1889) refers them as 14, rather than 16, sheets, approx. 19” x 25”, at 2/6d each. C. Smith & Sons were another prominent publisher. Whereas Black advertised their Scottish quarter-inch maps, if intermittently, as late as 1910, the England and Wales equivalents seem to have been little promoted, possibly as the same mapping was made available, much more cheaply and more usefully, through other outlets.


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. From 1897 the 16-sheets of England & Wales were replaced by a new series of twelve maps, marketed as Bartholomew rather than Black. The history of these and the numerous other derivatives is given under Bartholomew, together with some map extracts.



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