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  John Cooke                  Engraver and Publisher: 1765 - 1845                         INTRODUCTION JOHN COOKE – of London and Plymouth SECOND EDITION   An avid collector of Devon guidebooks I soon became aware that a certain John Cooke had either engraved or engraved and published plans of the city of Plymouth or of its breakwater. Some of my research was later put into an article about the Plymouth Breakwater. [1] I had managed to acquire a number of maps and plans depicting this monumental enterprise and Cooke´s name appeared several times. The name Cooke is certainly not rare. However, there appeared to be two or even three engravers of that name around this time, with two operating from London, the other from Stonehouse, Plymouth. According to Tooley´s Dictionary of Mapmakers (the most reliable source at that time) there seemed to be a father and son team [2] of John and Charles Cooke in London as well as a possible second John in London and yet another one in Plymouth. In t
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  JOHN COOKE – 1765 - 1845   I. London   For a long time John Cooke (1765-1845) was largely overlooked. At the end of the 18 th century there was a father and son partnership printing in London and publishing works which were fairly popular in their time. Tooley’s influential work on the mapmaking trade [1] had over 10 entries for the name Cooke and the first listed a father John (1731-1810) and his son and successor Charles Cooke (1750-1816). John was listed as Engraver, draughtsman , and publisher of London and this was followed by a list of London addresses. Charles was listed under Publisher of No.17 Paternoster Row . All of the addresses given for John the father and the three works noted all belonged to a different John Cooke. The works attributed to Charles were correct and included George Alexander Cooke’s (no relation) The Modern British Traveller (1802-1810), the Topography of Great Britain as well as an atlas, the Universal System of Geography . All of these works were
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  II. Plymouth     The first guide book to any of the Three Towns is generally regarded as being The Picture of Plymouth; the text of this guide is credited to Henry Woollcombe (1778-1847), a local Plymouth resident and Attorney at Law of Frankfort Street, who founded the Plymouth Athenaeum and became Mayor of Plymouth (1813). [1] This guide was first issued by Rees and Curtis and contained one small map, The Town of Plymouth Dock 1811 ( 20 ) signed by John Cooke as engraver. There was no immediate reason to think John Cooke was local as the book was also sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, a well-known London group of publishers and booksellers. With much expanded and revised text this was reissued as the Tourist's Companion (published by Granville & Son of Plymouth-Dock) with Cooke’s map and a second map in 1823 and 1828 ( 20 ). Significantly, for the second issue the date ( 1811 ) was deleted but New Road Stonehouse Plymo was added to Cooke’s signature. Thi
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