A General View of the World, Geographical, Historical, and Philosophical; on a Plan Entirely New. Complete in Two Volumes

Bungay: C Brightley and T Kinnersley, 1804 First edition in 2 volumes comprehensively illustrated with high quality plates and maps. The Reverend Blomfield drew on a variety of sources, eg Oliver Goldsmith, Bruce to produce a work which covers a wide range of topics including 'animated nature', astronomy, geology and 'mathematical geography' as well as a tour of the world as it was known then. Blomfield clearly wanted to produce a work that was so comprehensive that it was the only work that anyone would need to read on those subjects. The plate listing only refers to around half the plates and maps. Both volumes retain the original marbled boards which are rubbed, and have new pigskin leather spines and corners and new endpapers. The spines do not have labels. Volume I, 827 pp, contains frontispiece, vignette title page, preface, text covering geology, nature, europe, and much else, and 9 full page engravings, 10 full page maps, 1 folding map and 1 folding chart. Volume II, dated 1805, has 695 pp plus index. It covers a range from Japan, China, the E Indies, Southern Europe and France to North and S America. It contains 11 maps - 2 folding, and 20 full page plates. The N American map shows much of the United States in French and Mexican hands.The contents are in generally very good clean condition - but the paper is quite fragile so there are some page tears generally not affecting text or plate contents; some crumpling of pages - this affects the f/p and title page of volume I and a folding map in vol II. Vol 1 has some browning to the base of pages - it is about 2 inches long and half an inch into the bottom margin - not affecting text. There is a very small hole in the vignette title page. Some pages in both volumes have light spotting or browning.