1830 Wallis Map and Game, England and Wales

A fine example of this colorful c. 1830 table game map of England and Wales, filled with vignette illustrations. A race game with the added benefit of teaching children geography, this map represents each county in England and Wales.

A Closer Look

Lovely hand-colored depictions of all the counties in England and Wales are included, with vignettes relating to local industries or famous landmarks, such as cathedrals, Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and Stonehenge. The prevalence of mines, the presence of some factories, and the inclusion of a wide variety of mechanical apparatuses gives a sense of the state of the Industrial Revolution at this time, just on the cusp of the railway revolution. In fact, an early steam engine appears in the illustrations just below the title, perhaps a representation of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830, the first modern commercial intercity railway using steam-powered engines.

A race game, players begin at the mouth of the Thames east of London and the game ends when one player reaches the capital. Rather than rolling dice, the game involved a somewhat complex system of drawing numbers from a bag and adding them sequentially until one player reached 151.

Publication History and Census

Given that multiple undated editions of this game map were produced, catalog listings vary widely, making a true census difficult to establish. The railway illustration mentioned above suggests a date of 1830 or later, while the absence of depictions of natural disasters that appeared in later editions of the map indicate a date before 1840. The OCLC contains eleven listings for a map with this title, with dates ranging from 1795 into the 1850s. All told, including catalog listings not in the OCLC, some twenty institutions in North America and the United Kingdom hold an edition of this map.