- Header
- Thomas Jefferys
- Also known as
-
Thomas Jefferys
-
primary name: Jefferys, Thomas
-
other name: Jeffreys, Thomas
- Details
- individual; printmaker; publisher/printer; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1719-1771
- Address
- Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell ; by 1750 at corner of St Martin's Lane, near Charing Cross.
- Biography
- Leading cartographer who made important contributions to the mapping of England, North America asnd the Caribbean; also produced, published and sold prints. Born in Birmingham, but moved early to London where he was apprenticed to Emmanuel Bowen (q.v.) in 1735, he was living in Red Lion Street (now Britton Street), Clerkenwell, London; in business on his own account in 1744; 1746, appointed geographer to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and in 1760 to George III; 1750, moved to the corner of Charing Cross; 1751, married Elizabeth Raikes, daughter of Robert Raikes (q.v.); 1766, bankrupt, but recovered his business; 1768, in Paris with Robert Sayer with whom he published "A general topography of North America" in the same year. His son, also Thomas, continued his business in St Martin's Lane after his death in 1771, in partnership with Willliam Faden (q.v.) until 1776.
Billheads in Heal Collection (Heal,59.93 and Heal,100.42) state "Bought of Thomas Jefferys Engraver, Geographer to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales...Who has a fine Collection of Foreign Prints by the most celebrated Masters Antient or Modern, consisting of History, Heads, Landskips, Maps, Charts, Plans &c. Likewise the greatest Variety of the best English Prints, among which are a great number of views of the most remarkable places, Cities, Palaces, &c., either plain or Colour'd for the Diagonal Mirrour or Concave Glass. Prints framed and Glazed in the most elegant manner. Bakerville's fine Writing Paper & all sorts of Stationary &c."
Heal,59.93 is dated 1760 and Heal,100.42 is dated 1756. Heal's annotations on mounts: "See large trade-card in A.H. collection of Thomas Jefferys (Heal,82.13). Compare billheads in A.H. collection of Wm. Faden, engraver, at above address 'successor to Mr. Thos. Jefferys, Geographer to the King.' See also trade-card in A.H. collection of Spilsbury, engraver, 'from Mr. Jefferys' "
Heal,82.13 and identical trade card in Banks Collection (D,2.3728) advertise "Thomas Jefferys Engraver. Geographer to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, at ye Corner of St. Martin's Lane near Charing Cross, Sells great Variety of Prints, English and Foreign by the most Celebrated Masters. And all Sorts of Maps and Globes."
See drawing of Jefferys by Paul Sandby (1904,0819.242.402)
His brother Nathaniel Jefferys (q.v.) was a major London goldsmith.
Trade card in Banks Collection (Banks,76*.11) advertises "A Plan of all the Houses destroyed & damaged by the Great Fire which begun [sic] in Exchange Alley Cornhill, on Friday March 25th, 1748. By T. Jefferys Geographer to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales."
- Bibliography
- J.B.Harley, Imago Mundi, XX 1966 pp.27-48 The banruptcy of TJ
Mary Pedley, The Map Collector, 1982, pp.20-22, on Jeffreys and Sayer in Paris in 1768
M. S. Pedley, ed., 'The map trade in the late eighteenth century: letters to the London map sellers Jefferys and Faden', 2000
L. Worms, "Thomas Jefferys (1719-1771): beginning the world afresh", in Mapforum 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp.20-29.
