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Title: Mexico, California and Texas
- Author: John Tallis
- Date: 1851
- Condition: Excellent - Small separations at centerfold.
- Inches: 13 x 10 [Image]
- Centimeters: 33.02 x 25.40 [Image]
- Product ID: 308661
Decorative map of Texas, California, and the greater Southwest, depicting Texas in its full Republic configuration, complete with the narrow “stovepipe” extension reaching north toward present‑day Wyoming and Colorado.
The map shows Upper California with the gold regions prominently overprinted in gold, retains the pre‑Gadsden boundary with Mexico, and incorporates a wealth of up‑to‑date geographical and political detail. Numerous Native American tribes are identified across the Southwest, and early emigrant and exploration routes are carefully traced through Texas and the western territories. Forts and military outposts are noted throughout Texas and Upper California, enhancing the map’s historical and military interest.
Background on Creator
John Tallis (7 November 1817 – 3 June 1876) was an English bookseller and cartographic publisher best known for his highly decorative mid‑19th‑century maps and atlases. Born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, he moved to London around the late 1830s–early 1840s, where he first gained notice with a series of London Street Views depicting the city’s major commercial streets. In the 1840s he worked in partnership with Frederick Tallis and later under the imprint John Tallis & Company, issuing views, maps, and atlases from about 1838 to 1851. His principal engraver was John Rapkin, whose ornate borders and vignette scenes led Tallis’s maps—especially the 1849 Illustrated Atlas of the World, produced for the period of the Great Exhibition—to be regarded as among the last great decorative works of Victorian English cartography. Beyond maps, Tallis also ventured into illustrated periodicals, notably founding the Illustrated News of the World in 1858, but he eventually sold this enterprise and his later business difficulties culminated in bankruptcy by 1861.