Beschreibung:

Schauplatz Fünf Theile der Welt nach und zu Anton Friedrich Büschings grosser Erdbeschreibung in drey Theilen herausgegeben.
Vienna: Ignaz Albrecht, 1789-1806. Oblong folio. Two parts in five sections, bound in four volumes. 6 engraved titles, 48 engraved coats of arms and 830 engraved maps, a few folding, the majority with original body color, map 118 restored at outer margin, map 126 with manuscript marginalia and map 677 with a few small marginal tears, slightly browned, partly with brown stains and fingermarks, some worming (mostly only outside the map illustrations), small isolated waterstains and vertical creases at corners, five leaves of letterpress text, thumb tab index to all four volumes, volume one in full contemporary calf, volumes 2-4 in contemporary half calf over marbled paper boards, the upper cover with red paper title with gilt letters. Condition : rubbed and scuffed. A rare and detailed atlas documenting the birth of the Austrian Empire. The twenty-three year-old Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (1766-1820) published this, the second Austrian printed world atlas, at the rate of one map per week for 17 years from June 1789 to July 1806, producing, in total, some 830 separate engraved maps of Europe. A third part of the atlas was planned to cover the rest of the world, but this was never published. The period of production of the atlas saw the end of the Holy Roman Empire and the creation and changes in the shape of the Austrian Empire, including the conferences in Rastatt (1797-1799), Regensburg (1801-1803) and, on 24 March 1803, the Imperial Recess (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss), which greatly reduced the number of clerical territories from 81 to only 3 and imperial cities from 51 to 6. The coverage of the atlas is uneven. The maps of Southeastern Europe (Turkish Empire), Eastern Central Europe (Hungary, Poland, East and West Prussia), European Russia, Northern Europe and the British Isles, which were the first to be issued (1789-1791), total only 11 per cent of the atlas, whilst no fewer than 297 maps are devoted to the Romano-German Empire. Rare. A survey of auction records does not reveal any other complete example of this atlas on the market in the past thirty years. In fact, we have only been able to identify five complete examples in institutional holdings (Austrian National Library, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Landesbibliothek Südtirol, and the University of Michigan, William Clements Library). Phillips 2845; Atlantes Austriaci I, 84 ff., Rei A; Dörflinger, Johannes, 'The First Austrian World Atlases: Schrämbl and Reilly' in Imago Mundi Volume 33, pp.65-71, 1981.