Map from John Bevis’s (1695-1771) legendary Uranographia Britannica [c. 1748], a celestial atlas of both high astronomical ambition and artistic beauty which was never formally published, its engraved sheets languishing in legal limbo, sequestered by the courts for some 35 years after the bankruptcy in 1750 of Bevis’s partner, the London instrument maker John Neale. “The Uranographia, if published as scheduled, would certainly have joined the elite ranks of the Grand Atlases” (Ashworth, p. 53), namely Beyer’s Uranometria (1603), Schiller’s Coelestum Stellatum Christianum (1627), Hevelius’s Firmamentum (1690), Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis (1729), and Bode’s Uranographia (1801), the fine ‘working star charts’ which were essential tools of astronomers in the 17th and 18th centuries. “No expense was spared in the interest of accuracy and artistic quality. The plates of Uranographia Britannica were beautifully engraved … It has been suggested that they may have been contracted to Dutch craftsmen, then recognized as being the best. The artwork was superb, far better than in Johannes Bayer’s Uranometria on which the plates were based”.