Ex Carta

Each song is accompanied by a map engraved by William Hole, among the earliest named English copperplate engravers. Hole had worked on cartographic projects by Christopher Saxton and 

, but here his task was different: to visualise Drayton’s poetic landscape rather than to provide precise survey maps. 

The maps are arranged according to the poem’s songs, not by consistent county divisions, and therefore vary in scale. Conventional cartographic features – roads, borders, or uniform measurements – are minimal. Instead, Hole developed an allegorical iconography: rivers recline as nymphs or river gods, hills rise as giants, woods are peopled with hunters, and towns are personified as crowned figures or armorial emblems. This anthropomorphic style parallels Drayton’s poetic method, where natural features are given voice and character. As Drayton explained, the maps offer ‘an especiall helpe to the Readers understanding,’ showing ‘every Mountaine, Forrest, River, and Valley’ in visual form.13 The anthropomorphic embodiments of natural features resonate with other more contemporary fantasy maps in this collection, including those of 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' (1982) with its Japanese animism, and the Rivers of London series (2011–). 

Printed in black and white, copies of the Poly-Olbion were sometimes coloured later by hand. Hole also engraved the portrait of Prince Henry, Drayton’s patron, and the decorative frontispiece. The series remains one of the most ambitious collaborations of poetry and cartography in early modern Europe, unique in its conception as a literary atlas.

This second edition was printed in 1613, a year after the first issue of 1612. It contains eighteen of Hole’s allegorical county maps, all beautifully engraved with rich environmental textures and illustrative detail; the ‘maps capture the poem’s anthropomorphizing of the land and its engagement with historical myths’. Although the Poly-Olbion was admired and frequently mined for local lore, it was rarely read in its entirety. Yet the union of Drayton’s text with Hole’s imaginative cartography stands as a landmark of Jacobean print culture, blending topography, myth, and national identity.

William Hole’s allegorical county maps for Drayton’s 

 transform poetry into cartography, personifying rivers, hills, and towns as vivid figures within a living landscape. These intricate engravings fuse topography and myth to visually represent Michael Drayton’s poetic vision of England.

Born in Warwickshire, Michael Drayton (1563–1631) was, according to Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ‘a butcher’s sonne’ who lived ‘at the bay-windowe houise next the east end of St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street’. Drayton was settled in London by 1590 ‘looking for laurels and patrons’ as a poet. His first printed work was 

 (1591), published when he was in his twenties. His final work, 

 (1630), was issued the year before his death. He also wrote some twenty-three plays, though these are less esteemed than his verse. His magnum opus is the 

, an ambitious national poem that sought to capture the history, landscape, and traditions of Britain in verse.

 as early as 1598; an important source on poetry of the time reported that ‘Michael Drayton is now penning, in English verse, a Poem called PolyOlbion’, describing the work as ‘Geographicall and Hydrographicall’. 

 comprises some 15,000 lines of Alexandrine couplets, divided into thirty ‘songs,’ each treating one to three English or Welsh counties.11 Drayton combines ancient history, myth, folklore, and local custom with descriptive geography to create an encyclopaedic celebration of the land. To guide readers through its scope, the first part was supplied with historical and philological summaries; Drayton intended to continue the poem into Scotland, but that portion was never completed.

The title means both ‘Many blessings’ and ‘Multiple Albion’, evoking both its celebratory and all-encompassing ambition.

Frontispiece for Poly Olbion

Map of Cornwall and Devon

Map of Dorset and Hampshire

Map of Somerset and Wiltshire

Map of Hereford with parts of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire

Map of Gloucestershire with part of Worcestershire

Map of Shropshire

Map of Cheshire

Map of Staffordshire

Map of Warwickshire with parts of Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire

Map of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire

Map of Middlesex and Hertfordshire

Map of Surrey and Sussex

Map of Kent

Map of Essex and part of Suffolk

Map of Welsh counties of Cardiganshire, Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire

Map of Norfolk

Map of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire

Map of Welsh counties of Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, and the Bristol Channel

Map of Welsh counties of Pembrokeshire and Carmaerthenshire

Map of Welsh counties of Caernarfonshire, Merionethshire and the Isle of Angelsey

Map of Welsh counties Flintshire and Denbighshire

Each song is accompanied by a map engraved by William Hole, among the earliest named English copperplate engravers. Hole had worked on cartographic projects by Christopher Saxton and John Speed, but here his task was different: to visualise Drayton’s poetic landscape rather than to provide precise survey maps.

The maps are arranged according to the poem’s songs, not by consistent county divisions, and therefore vary in scale. Conventional cartographic features – roads, borders, or uniform measurements – are minimal. Instead, Hole developed an allegorical iconography: rivers recline as nymphs or river gods, hills rise as giants, woods are peopled with hunters, and towns are personified as crowned figures or armorial emblems. This anthropomorphic style parallels Drayton’s poetic method, where natural features are given voice and character. As Drayton explained, the maps offer ‘an especiall helpe to the Readers understanding,’ showing ‘every Mountaine, Forrest, River, and Valley’ in visual form.13 The anthropomorphic embodiments of natural features resonate with other more contemporary fantasy maps in this collection, including those of 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' (1982) with its Japanese animism, and the Rivers of London series (2011–).

Printed in black and white, copies of the Poly-Olbion were sometimes coloured later by hand. Hole also engraved the portrait of Prince Henry, Drayton’s patron, and the decorative frontispiece. The series remains one of the most ambitious collaborations of poetry and cartography in early modern Europe, unique in its conception as a literary atlas.

This second edition was printed in 1613, a year after the first issue of 1612. It contains eighteen of Hole’s allegorical county maps, all beautifully engraved with rich environmental textures and illustrative detail; the ‘maps capture the poem’s anthropomorphizing of the land and its engagement with historical myths’. Although the Poly-Olbion was admired and frequently mined for local lore, it was rarely read in its entirety. Yet the union of Drayton’s text with Hole’s imaginative cartography stands as a landmark of Jacobean print culture, blending topography, myth, and national identity.