This is the North Eastern sheet of Stanford’s Library Map, extending as far east as Straford and West Ham; further sheets were available to extend coverage as far as Greenwich.

Our example is probably a variant of Hyde’s 10th state of the map: Liverpool Street station is shown (opened 1874) but the publisher’s address has not been updated.

Stanford's Library Map has been described by bibliographer Ralph Hyde as ‘unquestionably the most detailed and useful commercial Map of London produced in the Victorian period’.

Covering 120 square miles and prepared on a scale of 6 inches to the mile under the supervision of Trelawny Saunders, it was conceived as part of the series of 'Library Maps' which Stanford initiated in the 1850s in acknowledgement of the popularity and commercial possibilities presented by the Public Libraries Act.

There was a pressing need for a new map: in the 30 years since Greenwood's large-scale survey London had become the largest city in the world, and patchy revisions of earlier material were failing to keep pace with the new bridges, railways and acres of new buildings both public and private.

Stanford's map was one of two original large-scale surveys which were first put before the public in the year of the International Exhibition of 1862, the other being by Edward Weller and issued in parts with the Weekly Dispatch Atlas. Weller's map is clear and detailed, but cannot quite match Stanford's in terms of quality.

In the decade before the first detailed Ordnance Survey map of London, Stanford's Library Map had no other serious rival. The pace of change continued unabated and the map was scrupulously revised to show developments such as the embankment of the Thames and the new subterranean railway system.

Condition & Materials
Lithographed map sheet, printed area measures 96 x 84.5 cm, original hand colour with a couple of sites circled in red ink or marked with a cross. Dissected into 20 sheets and laid on linen, light staining to upper and lower margins.

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Stanford's Library Map of London, Northeastern Sheet