Four Centuries of Special Geography: An Annotated Guide to Books that Purport to Describe All the Countries in the World Published in English before 1888

681 Pages·1993·32.11 MB·English

by  O. Sitwell

FOUR CENTURIES OF SPECIAL GEOGRAPHY
Geography as a university subject dates from the late nineteenth cen-
tury. However, in the preceding 400 years, more than 900 English-
language books devoted to describing all the countries in the world,
known collectively as special geography, were published. This book is
the first comprehensive guide to this genre, which then formed the
mainstream of geography. It lists, in a series of main entries, all known
works published before 1888, providing extensive bibliographical infor-
mation about them, together with critical notes about most of the books
intended for an adult audience, as well as about many school books.
The main entries are preceded by an introduction in which the author
evaluates special geography as a genre and discusses its relation to the
evolving ideas of the period. A detailed guide to the organization of the
main entries is provided, as are chronological and short-title indexes.
This book will interest scholars examining the development of geog-
raphy in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as those work-
ing in the history of education and the evolution of interests among the
reading public.
O.F.G. Sitwell is an associate professor in the Department of Geogra-
phy at the University of Alberta.
Title page, Geography anatomized: or, a compleat geographical grammer, Pat Gordon,
1711 (6th ed.)
O.F.G. SlTWELL
Four Centuries of
Special Geography
An annotated guide to books that purport to
describe all the countries in the world
published in English before 1888,
with a critical introduction
UBC PRESS / VANCOUVER
e UBC Press 1993
All rights reserved
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper oo
ISBN 0-7748-0444-0
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Sitwell, O.F.G., 1933-
Four centuries of special geography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-0444-0
1. Geography- Bibliography. 2. Geography- Early works to 1800
- Bibliography. I. Title.
Z6002.S58 1993 016.91 C93-091687-5
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science
Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support to its publishing program
from the Canada Council, the Province of British Columbia Cultural Services Branch,
and the Department of Communications of the Government of Canada.
UBC Press
University of British Columbia
6344 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
[phone]
Fax: [phone]
To archivists and librarians
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Tables and Figures / viii
Preface / ix
Introduction / 1
Special Geography as a Genre / 2
Special Geography in Its Historical Context and the Chronology of
Publication / 10
A Preliminary Assessment / 23
The Contribution of This Guide / 26
A Guide for Users / 28
"Notes / 35
Codes and Abbreviations / 37
Book Categories / 45
General Abbreviations / 45
Library Codes / 47
Main Entries / 61
Sources / 607
Part 1: General Catalogues, Bibliographies, and Related Works /
607
Part 2: Books, Papers, and Other Papers Related to Special
Geography and to the History of Ideas / 610
Index / 619
The Chronology of Publication / 619
Short Titles / 642
Tables and Figures
FIGURE 1 Adult special geographies published in the United King-
dom and the United States, together with closely related books /
16
FIGURE 2 Special geographies written for young readers or for use
in schools, published in the United Kingdom or the United States
/ 18
TABLE 1 Special geography and its subclasses / 19
TABLE 2 Sample entries / 38
Preface
The ambition to identify every book whose author claimed to have
described every country in the world took hold of me gradually. One
root lay in a sense of dissatisfaction with my doctoral thesis. My grad-
uate training coincided roughly with an episode known to geographers
as the Quantitative Revolution. When it began I was a regional geog-
rapher; when it ended I was a spatial scientist. I learned much in the
process, but nobody would call the thesis that was the proof of my
newly acquired intellectual rigour a polished piece of work. Then there
was my interest in the history of geography. The groundwork there was
laid by George Tatham. His specialty was the eighteenth century, then
a neglected wasteland so far as those interested in our traditions were
concerned. When I set out to follow in his footsteps, I decided that I
would survey that terra incognita and establish its boundaries. In less
metaphoric speech, I decided that, since in those days geographers were
people who described strange lands and distant places, I would compile
a catalogue of them. Because I wanted the project to be manageable, I
decided to limit the list to those authors who had sought to describe
every country, not just some of them. Not long after I had made that
decision, the then Keeper of Older Printed Books and Special Collec-
tions in the Library of Trinity College Dublin asked me, 'Do you know
Cox?' As I did not, she produced the three volumes in which Edward
Godfrey Cox had sought to list every book of travel, exploration, or
discovery published in English before the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
As I reconnoitred the field, it dawned on me that the men who had
dominated my graduate program had been right to insist that their stu-
dents cite their sources. Everyone makes mistakes, but those who show
where they got their facts make it relatively easy for those who come
later to correct an error. Thus, gradually, my ambition took its final
shape. I would list every book, and as far as possible every edition of
every book, whose author had sought to describe every country in the
world, provided that the books had been written in English in the days