Epilogue

The epilogue to this book reinforces the assertion that the physical scale of little maps, atlases, playing cards, and distance tables altered the very essence of what they represented. It synopsizes how pocket cartography and nation-building poetry together recalibrated the British topography to accommodate an expansive public, at a critical time when the nation was shifting from a realm to a commonwealth. It also explores the ramifications of current archiving systems and the scholarly practices associated with them, both of which tend to dismiss or conceal the material evidence of ordinary practitioners and their everyday practice in early modern Britain.