Detail of a printed book shows a full-page illustration on the frontispiece showing a child carrying the world on their shoulders.
Detail of a printed book shows a fold-out map that includes latitude and longitude lines, orange and green colors, and roman numerals.
Printed book bound in brown leather shows wear near the spine.

Atlas des Enfans, ou nouvelle methode pour apprendre la geographie,...

1784

How did children learn about geography and the globe? This popular French children’s atlas, published in many editions after the first in 1766, brought expanding knowledge of the globe’s surface – via hand-colored maps copied from Guillaume Delisle - to an audience of children (of both sexes, as the introduction insists in several places) in a pocket format. Employing a didactic question-and-answer format, it presents elements of the physical, political, climate and human geography of each kingdom, region or state, explicitly linking children’s study of geography to their ability to contribute to the commercial, political and military activities of their homeland. In 2018, the JCB acquired a French and a Spanish edition of the atlas, which will join the Portuguese edition we currently own, providing an invaluable source for comparative scholarship across languages.

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