Jun 07, 2017 - Sale 2450

Sale 2450 - Lot 181

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(PENNSYLVANIA -- GEOLOGY.) Williams, W.; and Lesley, J.P. A Geological and Topographical Map of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Compiled from Official Reports. Large hand-colored engraved geological folding case map dissected into 32 sections and mounted on original linen. 39x54 1/4 inches overall size; lightly toned with minor edge wear and small losses to corners, ink and colored pencil annotations; printed paper ownership label of Peter Lesley dated 1863 on upper case cover, "J.P. Lesley Philadelphia" in ink appearing on the verso of several panels. Philadelphia: Charles Desilver, 1857
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Additional Details

An unofficial version of H. D. Rogers' 1858 geological map of Pennsylvania engraved from the original manuscript map of the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania provided to Wellington Williams by Rogers. After Rogers decided to have the map printed overseas using chromolithography instead of hand-colored engraving, Williams began selling copies of his map without Rogers' permission, precipitating a lawsuit that resulted in a court-ordered suppression of further map sales. The Rogers manuscript had been prepared by J. Peter Lesley, geological assistant on the Rogers survey, who provided Williams with corrections and gave Williams permission to use his name on the map. Lesley would later become State Geologist under the Second Pennsylvania Geological Survey initiated in 1874. Considering its suppressed history and institutional scarcity, this is undoubtedly one of the rarest published geological maps of Pennsylvania, and the present copy comes with fine association: bearing ownership inscriptions and manuscript notes by one of its core creators. Below the map are 6 hand-colored geologic profile sections and a small table which correlates Pennsylvania rocks with stratigraphic equivalents occurring in New York and Europe. Marianne Withers "The Portolan" No. 17, p.6-8; not listed or described in Marcou or other references. OCLC locates only the Library of Congress example.