Bibliography

Cartography and map-making

Results (24)
OS200: digitally re-mapping Ireland’s Ordnance Survey heritage, Online, ?–present. URL: <https://www.irelandmapped.ie>
abstract:
The project aims to gather historic Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and texts, currently held in disparate archives, to form a single freely accessible online resource for academic and public use. This digital platform will reconnect the First Edition Six-Inch Maps with the OS Memoirs, Letters and Name Books. In doing so it will enable a team of researchers from across Ireland to uncover otherwise hidden and forgotten aspects of the life and work of those employed by the OS and to explore the complex histories associated with the survey and its legacies and impacts still witnessed in the landscape today.
Ó Cionaith, Finnian, “The anatomy of a map: John Brownrigg’s 1799 Dublin series”, Studia Hibernica 44 (2018): 79–102.
abstract:
This paper reviews a little-known map series of Dublin produced by surveyor John Brownrigg in 1799. Though frequently referenced and celebrated in modern historical literature of the period, the number of large-scale city plans of Dublin during the eighteenth century was very low. Infrequent levels of urban map revision in pre-Ordnance Survey Ireland meant that civic organisations regularly had to consult cartographic data that was potentially years old. The latter decades of the eighteenth century witnessed substantial changes to Dublin’s urban layout as the city grew. Extensive redevelopment of the streetscape resulted in existing city maps rapidly becoming out of date as new surveys were technically complicated and financially expensive to create. This paper examines Brownrigg’s 1799 map series and explores the reasons for its commission by the Dublin Paving Board, which was responsible for street maintenance in the city at that time. Brownrigg, a leading surveyor and disciple of Rocque’s ‘French School’ of surveying, applied his substantial knowledge of surveying techniques and cartographic style to create a comprehensive and comparatively inexpensive map series of Dublin, which captured the city in the midst of substantial physical change.
Freitag, Barbara, Hy Brasil: the metamorphosis of an island, from cartographic error to Celtic elysium, Textxet Studies in Comparative Literature, 5.69, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2013. xii + 343 pp + ill..
abstract:
Brasil Island, better known as Hy Brasil, is a phantom island. In the fourteenth century Mediterranean mapmakers marked it on nautical charts to the west of Ireland, and its continued presence on maps over the next six hundred years inspired enterprising seafarers to sail across the Atlantic in search of it. Writers, too, fell for its lure. While English writers envisioned the island as a place of commercial and colonial interest, artists and poets in Ireland fashioned it into a fairyland of Celtic lore. This pioneering study first traces the cartographic history of Brasil Island and examines its impact on English maritime exploration and literature. It investigates the Gaelicization process that the island underwent in nineteenth century and how it became associated with St Brendan. Finally, it pursues the Brasil Island trope in modern literature, the arts and popular culture.
Voorburg, René [et al.], Tabula Peutingeriana: reconstruction of an antique Roman map with internet technology, Online: Privately published, 2011–present. URL: <https://omnesviae.org>
Linguistic geographies: the Gough map of Great Britain, Online: King's College, London, 2011–present. URL: <http://goughmap.org>
Duffy, Patrick J., “[46] Ordnance Survey maps and official reports”, in: James H. Murphy (ed.), The Oxford history of the Irish book, vol. 4: The Irish book in English, 1800–1890, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 553–562.
abstract:

Following its absorption into the United Kingdom in 1801, Ireland was at the receiving end of an expanding imperial governance which generated a comprehensive geographical archive throughout the nineteenth century. The running of national and local government was facilitated by the publication of maps and surveys, inventories of property and valuations, topographic and statistical databases of population, place names, and administrative units, surveys of bogs and mineral resources, and scores of reports of commissions of enquiry on a diverse range of social, economic, and development issues. This chapter traces the production, publication, distribution, and uses of printed maps and reports at the behest of the government, a publishing process which might be seen as an important part of the extension of colonial control in Ireland.

Talbert, Richard J. A., Tom Elliott, Nora Harris, and Martin Steinmann [et al.] (eds), Rome’s world: The Peutinger Map reconsidered, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Andrews, J. H., Maps in those days: cartographic methods before 1850, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009.
Darcy, R., and William Flynn, “Ptolemy’s map of Ireland: a modern decoding”, Irish Geography 41:1 (March, 2008): 49–69.
Horner, Arnold A., Mapping Meath in the early nineteenth century, with an atlas of William Larkin’s map of County Meath, 1812, Bray, Co. Wicklow: Wordwell, 2007.
Ó Cadhla, Stiofán, Civilizing Ireland: Ordnance Survey 1824–1842, ethnography, cartography, translation, Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2007.
abstract:
A unique contemporary analysis of the huge imperial mapping project of the British Government in nineteenth century Ireland, which describes as well as re-interprets the value of science and modernity as practiced by the British empire. The book raises questions about representation and academic discourses and highlights and interprets colonial techniques of observation and description. The nature of ‘evidence’ within colonial archive is also questioned. Focussing on the main aspects of the survey from a contemporary theoretical perspective it both enlivens the original documents and serves as a sensitive critique of it. The main themes are ethnographic description, translation and cartography and the relationship between them in the nineteenth century. Central to this is the emerging ‘view’ of Ireland and the Irish and the idea of the project as representative of early Irish ethnography. The book contains new findings in relation to renowned scholars such as John O’Donovan and re-engages with the Friel vs Andrews debate on ‘Translation and Irish culture’. The book should be of wide interest to folklorists, cultural sociologists, geographers, historians, ethnologists, cultural studies, Irish language scholars and the general reader with an interest in Ireland.
(source: Publisher)
Andrews, J. H., “55: Colonial cartography in a European setting: the case of Tudor Ireland”, in: David Woodward [ed.], The history of cartography, vol. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 1670–1683.
Stone, Jeffrey, “56: The Kingdom of Scotland: cartography in an age of confidence”, in: David Woodward [ed.], The history of cartography, vol. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 1684–1692.
Woodward, David [ed.], The history of cartography, vol. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Horner, Arnold A., Mapping Offaly in the early nineteenth century, with an atlas of William Larkin’s map of King’s County, 1809, Bray, Co. Wicklow: Wordwell, 2006.
Krogt, Peter van der, Joan Blaeu, Atlas Maior of 1665: Anglia (vol. 2: Scotia & Hibernia), 2 vols, Cologne: Taschen Verlagen, 2006.
Reproduction, with introduction and texts by Peter van der Krogt
Krogt, Peter van der, “The place of the ‘Atlas of Scotland’ in the atlas production of Willem Jansz. and Joan Blaeu”, Scottish Geographical Journal 121:3 (2005): 261–268.
Ward, Anthony, “Transhumance and place-names: an aspect of early Ordnance Survey mapping on the Black Mountain Commons, Carmarthenshire”, Studia Celtica 33 (1999): 335–348.
OʼLoughlin, Thomas, “The view from Iona: Adomnán’s mental maps”, Peritia 10 (1996): 98–122.
abstract:
Adomnán wrote a geographical work. How did he view the world around which he imagined people travelling. This raises questions about the state of contemporary geographical knowledge and whether we can assume that he shares our notions of time and space. In fact, both are different. Here mental maps are used to allow him to tell us about his world rather than about the past of ours. We can use a series to reconstruct this world: (i) a T–O map to explain the actual sequence of movement in De locis sanctis and why Arculf’s arrival in Iona did not raise any questions for him; (ii) a Square–V map of the races of mankind; (iii) a map of circles based on Luke and Acts to explain the division of De locis sanctis into books; (iv) a map of scriptural signs which would explain the temporal inconsistencies in the description of places; and (v) an eschatological map which shows the book beginning at the gates of heaven and ending at the gates of hell.
Harley, J. Brian, and David Woodward [eds.], The history of cartography, 6 vols, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987–?.
Harley, J. Brian, and David Woodward [eds.], The history of cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Ó Domhnaill, Seán, “The maps of the Down survey”, Irish Historical Studies 3 (1942–1943): 381–392.
Gaidoz, Henri, and Ludwig Christian Stern, “Une version galloise de l’enseignement par les cartes, mit Anhang von Ludwig Christian Stern”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 4 (1903): 208–220.
Internet Archive: <link>
Gough, Richard, British topography: or, an historical account of what has been done for illustrating the topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, London: T. Payne and Son, J. Nichols, 1780.