[Americana]. MAP OF AMERICA MERID[IONA]LE. Brussels, [c.1850 - Lot 232

[Americana]. MAP OF AMERICA MERID[IONA]LE. Brussels, [c.1850]. 1 engraved blank map, handwritten addition, by Edmond Schoonbroodt of Liège, 56 x 65.5 cm. (sheet). (Small loss at lower right corner). Rare map of South America, partly handwritten. Printed outline map, beautifully enhanced and completed in ink by Edmond Schoonbroodt, of Liège (ink signature in cartouche, and "Cartes faites par Edmond" on verso). It is enriched with place names and enhanced with watercolor borders. The author of the annotations and coloring may be Edmond Schoonbroodt (1876-1940), a lawyer from Liège and Doctor of Law, but above all the author, under the pseudonym Rodolphe de Warsage, of numerous plays in a wide variety of genres (comedies, operettas, vaudevilles, tales and novels, etc.). The Etablissement géographique de Bruxelles, founded in 1830 by Philippe Vander Maelen, specialized in printing administrative and topographical maps, globes, atlases, dictionaries, etc., and also offered "Globes, maps and atlases for use in all educational establishments", including "atlases and dumb maps". The Catalogue de l'Etablissement (Brussels, 1850, p. 17) underlines the benefits of such tools: "Among the many advantages of teaching geography by means of silent, written maps, we must especially take into account the one that helps the memory: indeed, by this new mode of study, young people, by inscribing at each respective sign the localities or their indications, retain almost without effort and as it were by a practical procedure, all that they need to know of a science whose nomenclature has often tired the most sustained zeal".