I’ve been having a bit to trouble with the back end of the site over the past month, but I’ve now resolved these issues, so over the next few weeks the site’s content will be almost doubling as I add further topographical plate series, courtesy of the British Library, and begin to work on mapping different literary versions of London. I’m currently updating the site with a second Ackermann publication to complement the Microcosm: the collection of Select Views of London that he issued in 1816 along with a text by the architect John Buonarotti Papworth (the first plate in the series, showing St James’s Palace, is above). I’ll also be adding Thomas Malton’s Picturesque Tour Through the Cities of London and Westminster (1792-1800), which is one of my personal favourites. I talked about both of these works at a conference on Transforming Topography a couple of weeks ago; the recordings of that event should be available in due course.
After these two curations have been added, I have plates from three other publications lined up. The continuing development of Maps Marker Pro also means that I’ll be able to improve the site’s flexibility by allowing users dynamically to control the markers shown on the various maps. I’ve put together a sneak preview of this feature on this page, which includes markers for the three guides to London currently on the site. I also now have access to the 1819 revision of Horwood’s Plan published by William Faden. Preparing this for the site will take a little while, but once this is done, I hope to make this available as an additional layer on all the existing maps; London expanded a great deal in the twenty years between 1799 and 1819, and juxtaposing the two maps should be very helpful for more fully understanding the changes that it underwent.
