Steel engraving, 34 x 39.5 cm, engraved by Benjamin Rees Davies after William Barnard Clarke, original hand colour, numbered in an old hand, blank verso. A map of Moscow with vignettes of the Church of the Assumption in the Kremlin, and the view from the Sparrow Hill, with the Novo-Devitchei Monastery in the foreground.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in 1826 with the high-minded aim of making ‘useful’ information available to self-taught members of the working and lower middle classes. Some of the material was decidedly abstruse, subscribers fell away and the Society was wound up in 1848; however, the series of 209 maps published over a 14 year period from 1829 onwards were highly praised for their superior quality, accuracy and aesthetic appeal and remain an outstanding achievement.