Atlas Maior
With 594 maps and around three thousand pages of text, Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior was the largest and most expensive book published in the seventeenth century.
As the first part of a much larger work (Atlas Maior, sive Cosmographia Blaviana, qua solum, salum, coelum, accuratissime describuntur; Grand Atlas or Blaeu's Cosmography, in which are most accurately described earth, sea, and heaven), the work was published in Amsterdam between 1662 and 1672 in various configurations:
- Latin (Geographia qvæ est cosmographiæ Blavianæ, 11 volumes);
- French (Le grand atlas ou Cosmographie blaviane, en laquelle est exactement descritte la terre, la mer et le ciel, 12 volumes);
- Dutch (Grooten atlas, oft werelt-beschryving, in welcke 't aertryck, de zee en hemel wordt vertoont en beschreven, 9 volumes);
- German (10 volumes);
Earlier, smaller versions (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive, Atlas Novus) were published after 1634. Like Abraham Ortelius's earlier Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), Blaeu's work is widely considered a masterpiece of the Golden Age of Dutch cartography.
Blaeu produced about 1,550 copies of the atlas in a thirteen-year run, with uncoloured editions priced between 330 and 390 guilders and coloured editions at 430 to 460 guilders depending on the translation and number of maps.
