The Mapmakers - A History of Stanfords

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  • Author: Peter Whitfield
  • Publisher: Compendium Publishing
  • Catalogue: 121093
  • Size: 27x21cm
We are proud to sell this wonderful book, as The Mapmakers is quite literally, all about us. One of London’s best known specialist shops, we have been trading, in Charing Cross and now Covent Garden, for more than 150 years and we are famous all over the world as a premier supplier of maps and geographical books.

This book celebrates the history of our company, charting its role as a publisher of worldwide maps in the era when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and as a sales agent for the Ordnance Survey for more than a century. It tells the story of the company’s Victorian founders and some of their distinguished customers - real and fictitious - including John Ruskin, Florence Nightingale, Captain Scott, General Gordon and Sherlock Holmes.

The specialist family business was almost destroyed by the wars and economic crises of the 20th century, but we survived to become once again unrivalled as a supplier of maps and guidebooks to a new generation of world travellers.

In order to succeed, any business must mirror in some important way the society around it; this fascinating book shows how Stanfords reflected many of the forces which shaped the 19th and 20th century worlds.