Name:     Edward Weller
Dates:      Born ? Died: 1884
Map type: Detailed steel plate engraved maps.

Weller was a London-based engraver, cartographer and publisher, working from offices in Red Lion Square and later, Bloomsbury. Amongst his considerable portfolio were various atlases, many of which  focussed on the educational publishing market. Having established his credentials as an engraver of finely detailed works, he sold maps to be published in a number of regular  magazines and pamphlets, perhaps the best known being 'The Dispatch Atlas’; a compilation of maps Weller had already published in 'The Weekly Dispatch'. Although Weller usually engraved the maps himself, he did work in partnership with others, particularly John Dower for this 1858 and 1863 volume. Weller also published 'The Crown Atlas' in 1871.

The Dispatch Atlas featured well over one hundred superbly detailed steel plate engraved maps, usually with simplistic, single colour outline hand colouring, and  a distinctive header style. Most English counties featured, some of which were divided onto separate sheets, affording space to engrave in even greater detail. The maps of North and South Devonshire for example include such details as individual property names, as do those of the Northern and Southern parts of Hampshire.

After Weller's death in 1884, many of these astonishingly detailed plates were sold on to other map makers, including George Washington Bacon, who, whilst retaining the level of detail, expanded the printing area of each plate, adding more precise and varied hand colouring in keeping with the final decades of the century.