Name: Edward Stanford
Dates: 1827-1904
Map type: Detailed steel plate engraved maps.
Born in 1827 Edward Stanford grew up in an era of rapid and exciting change. He schooled at the City of London School, and began working with a certain Mr Trelawney Saunders, an established purveyor of maps and charts trading from the stationer's shop in Charing Cross. The business had been running for a few years, but was very much in its infancy and Stanford's enthusiastic input was soon to make waves.
The partnership began around 1852 but only a year later was dissolved as the partners went their own ways. Edward Stanford, aged 25, took complete control of the business himself. He realised there was an ever increasing market for maps opening up the expanding colonial lands to, not only the genuine explorers, but also the wave of new world travellers that was to follow.
One of his first large projects was to build a vast portfolio of large and detailed engraved continent and country maps. There was to follow perhaps his most renowned work, known simply as Stanford's Library Map of London. First published in 1862, it achieved high acclaim and was praised by The Royal Geographical Society as '...the most perfect map of London that has ever been issued...'. As his reputation soared, Stanford took on a number of re-issues of already established map collections, most notably the phenomenal collection of country maps, town plans and star charts, originally published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge of c.1845, which he published in 1875 with a hand colour wash to replace to the original outline colouring.
As the company expanded, Edward Stanford must have felt that his health was failing, and that the work rapidly increasing workload created by his success would soon be too much for him. To continue the family business, he initiated his son with the critical business knowledge accumulated over a lifetime, and soon afterwards, in 1884, retired, knowing his life's work was in good hands.
Edward Stanford died in 1904 at the age of 77.
Dates: 1827-1904
Map type: Detailed steel plate engraved maps.
Born in 1827 Edward Stanford grew up in an era of rapid and exciting change. He schooled at the City of London School, and began working with a certain Mr Trelawney Saunders, an established purveyor of maps and charts trading from the stationer's shop in Charing Cross. The business had been running for a few years, but was very much in its infancy and Stanford's enthusiastic input was soon to make waves.
The partnership began around 1852 but only a year later was dissolved as the partners went their own ways. Edward Stanford, aged 25, took complete control of the business himself. He realised there was an ever increasing market for maps opening up the expanding colonial lands to, not only the genuine explorers, but also the wave of new world travellers that was to follow.
One of his first large projects was to build a vast portfolio of large and detailed engraved continent and country maps. There was to follow perhaps his most renowned work, known simply as Stanford's Library Map of London. First published in 1862, it achieved high acclaim and was praised by The Royal Geographical Society as '...the most perfect map of London that has ever been issued...'. As his reputation soared, Stanford took on a number of re-issues of already established map collections, most notably the phenomenal collection of country maps, town plans and star charts, originally published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge of c.1845, which he published in 1875 with a hand colour wash to replace to the original outline colouring.
As the company expanded, Edward Stanford must have felt that his health was failing, and that the work rapidly increasing workload created by his success would soon be too much for him. To continue the family business, he initiated his son with the critical business knowledge accumulated over a lifetime, and soon afterwards, in 1884, retired, knowing his life's work was in good hands.
Edward Stanford died in 1904 at the age of 77.