Speaking of 16th-century atlases, Sotheby’s is auctioning one off next month as part of the sale of an aristocrat’s library:

The work of Yorkshire surveyor Christopher Saxton, printed between 1579 and 1590, is bound in one volume with a rare set of five charts by Giovanni Battista Boazio, illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s expedition to the West Indies and America from 1585-1586.

The volume, which runs to 40 pages of maps and plates, is expected to fetch between £500,000 and £700,000.

The atlas is regarded as a landmark in Elizabethan cartography, showing — for the first time in print — a picture of England and its geography never before presented in its entirety.