John Payne (fl. c. 1780 - c. 1800) was a little known cartographer and map publisher working in New York and Philadelphia in the last years of the 18th century. Nothing is known of his youth and education. He is known to have published Joseph Collyer's 1772 New System of Geography in London, and his own work is probably descended from Collyer's. Payne published, again in London, his two-volume Universal geography formed into a new and entire system in 1791. Dublin editions under this title appeared in 1792 and 1794, lacking maps and reducing the general geography to a glossary to make room travellers' tales, notably those of Hawkesworth: it is probably that Payne had nothing to do with the Dublin editions, which were almost certainly pirate editions. Sometime during the 1790s Payne emigrated to New York, where he would publish in 1798-9 Payne's New and Complete Universal Geography, one of the first examples of American - printed commercial cartography.



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