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S.D.U.K.: : Calcutta

Steel engraving, 34 x 40.5 cms, original hand colour, blank verso. With inset views of the Writers Buildings, Government House and Esplanade Row.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in 1826 with the high-minded aim of making 'useful' information available to self-taught members of the working and lower middle classes. Some of the material was decidedly abstruse, subscribers fell away and the Society was wound up in 1848; however, the series of 209 maps published over a 14 year period from 1829 onwards were highly praised for their superior quality, accuracy and aesthetic appeal and remain an outstanding achievement. Calcutta expanded rapidly under the Governor-Generalship of Wellesley at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. By the time our map was engraved Calcutta was considered the second city of the Empire, boasting the public architecture which led to the further epithet:, City of Palaces