Archibald Fullerton & Co were publishers and engravers of Glasgow with offices in London, Edinburgh and Dublin, active between 1834 and 1870 producing a Gazetteer of the World in 1856 and a Royal Illustrated Atlas in 1864.
The Royal Illustrated Atlas first part was published in 1854 and continued to be produced in 27 parts, the last being published in 1862. This was the last highly decorative atlas published in England. Even the maps without view or figures were beautifully coloured and engraved with a mixture of hand and printed colour. Swanston, Petermann, Bartholomew, MacNab and Johnson all contributed to the engraving of the maps.
It is interesting to note that in his Introduction Dr N Shaw, secretary to the RGS lists important general atlases published over a long period but only lists one atlas published in the US, Mitchell’s Universal Atlas of 1853. The maps bear a superficial resemblance to Keith Johnston’s Royal Atlas of the same period.
