Richard Blome

Richard Blome (1635–1705) was an English engraver, publisher, and cartographer who played a notable role in the development of printed maps and illustrated books in the late seventeenth century. Born into a family connected to the London Stationers’ Company, his father Richard Bloome was a member, and he entered the trade by patrimony, establishing his own business by the early 1660s.

Blome’s career focused on atlases and illustrated works, often drawing from the cartography of Nicolas Sanson, John Speed, and William Camden. His major undertakings include A Geographical Description of the Four Parts of the World (1670), Britannia (1673), and Speed’s Maps Epitomiz’d (1681, with later reissues). He also produced The Gentleman’s Recreation (1686), a guide designed to instruct young gentlemen in both fashionable and practical subjects.

He was the first in decades to publish a new folio world atlas in England, the first to issue a fresh series of county maps, and among the earliest to attempt illustrated surveys of London and the wider continents. His work helped sustain English map publishing at a time when continental Europe dominated the field.