Britannia (atlas)
1675 atlas of most major routes in England and Wales
Britannia is the title of each of three atlases created in England between the late 16th and mid 18th centuries, describing some or all of the British Isles. These are the books published by William Camden (in 1586, reprinted in 1693) and Richard Blome (in 1673) and John Ogilby (in 1675). Of the three, Ogilby's is probably the best known as it was the first to use measured distances.
Camden's Britannia
In 1577, William Camden (1551–1623) began his great work Britannia, a topographical and historical survey of all of Great Britain and Ireland. His stated intention was to "restore antiquity to Britaine, and Britain to his antiquity". The first edition, written in Latin, was published in 1586. It proved very popular, and ran through five further Latin editions, of 1587, 1590, 1594, 1600 and 1607, each greatly enlarged from its predecessor in both textual content and illustrations. The 1607 edition included for the first time a full set of English county maps, based on the surveys of Christopher Saxton and John Norden, and engraved by William Kip and William Hole (who also engraved the fine frontispiece). The first English-language edition, translated by Philemon Holland, appeared in 1610, again with some additional content supplied by Camden.
Britannia is a county-by-county description of Great Britain and Ireland.
“Britannia (atlas)” enters the record as 1675 atlas of most major routes in England and Wales. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Britannia, atlas and most can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q121755222. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1586, 1693, 1673 and 1675.
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This entry incorporates text from “Britannia (atlas)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.