In 2006 Birlinn Limited launched a Limited Editions imprint to make available high-quality facsimiles of works of outstanding historical and aesthetic interest. The first two titles, The Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (arguably the earliest full atlas of Scotland and first published in Amsterdam in 1654) and Daniell’s Scotland (the Scottish sections of William Daniell’s A Voyage Round Great Britain, first published between 1815 and 1822), were released in December 2006.

This December Birlinn will publish two more very special limited editions, John Kay’s Original Portraits and The Great Map.

JOHN KAY’S ORIGINAL PORTRAITS
A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the Late John Kay, miniature painter, Edinburgh
With Biographical Sketches and Illustrative Anecdotes

Birlinn’s Limited Editions imprint celebrates the extraordinary work of John Kay with a magnificent, beautifully bound two volume edition of Kay’s portraits and caricatures, originally published in Edinburgh in 1837–8.

Alan Bell, social historian and former Librarian of The London Library, introduces Kay’s life and remarkable achievement, emphasising how, with ‘the impression of a passing glance’, Kay created an engaging and unparalleled record of Edinburgh society during the Enlightenment. World-famous figures such as Adam Smith, Walter Scott, James Hutton, Joseph Black and even Vincent Lunardi (in his famous balloon) feature alongside all kinds of Edinburgh citizens – eminent doctors and scientists, lawyers and clerics, ladies of fashion and their admirers, soldiers and merchants, murderers and criminals.

Although John Kay (1742–1822) served his apprenticeship as a barber and followed this profession for many years in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, his consuming passion was observing and drawing the world around him. By 1785 he was working solely on his etchings and miniatures, which he sold from his shop in Parliament Square. After his death many of his caricatures were gathered together and published with anecdotal commentaries in two volumes.

THE GREAT MAP
The Military Survey Of Scotland 1747–55
William Roy

Immediately after the Jacobite Rising of 1745 an extraordinary exercise took place in Scotland – nothing short of a detailed survey of the whole of mainland Scotland, which was to have a great influence on the future of mapping. The magnificent colour mapping is reproduced in 342 large-format pages.

In addition to the cartography, The Great Map will contain three essays by academic specialists. Dr Yolande Hodson focuses on the life of William Roy and the cartography of the map; Professor Charles Withers writes about the broader context of mapping in 18th-century Scotland and Britain, and mapping in the Enlightenment, while Chris Tabraham supplies the detail of the historical and military background.

‘The Military Survey is a magnificent achievement, a formative influence upon the Ordnance Survey and provides an important view of a country in the throes of agrarian improvement and Enlightenment.’ CHARLES WITHERS

To order please contact Booksource on 0845 370 0067, or alternatively you can send a cheque to: Booksource, 50 Cambuslang Road, Glasgow, G32 8NB. Cheques must be made payable to Booksource.

You can preorder through our website but this does not reserve a copy for you, it is a notification service only.