Description

The chart, expanding from over 1000 BC to the beginning of the 19th century, with years and names of rulers, marked on the bottom, sorts important men and women from the history by categories listed on the left-hand side: Statesmen and Warriors, Divines and Metaphysicians etc, Mathematicians and Physicians, Artists, Poets, Orators and Critics etc, Lawyers, Historians and Antiquaries.

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was a British scholar, historian, natural philosopher, separatist theologian and grammarian, who authored over 150 works, including important time charts. In 1794, he arrived to New York and eventually moved to Pennsylvania.

The present time chart A Chart of Biography, first published in 1765, was “the most influential timeline of the eighteenth century” (Rosenberg – Grafton, 2010, p. 118) and was reprinted in various editions. The present print was made in 1805, a year after Priestley’s death and it is possibly the last edition.

Priestley also published separately a pamphlet with an explanation of the time chart, with bound-in smaller versions of the chart.

We could trace three institutional examples of this edition, housed by University of Birmingham, Yale University Library and The British Library.

References: Cf.: Daniel Rosenberg – Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline, 2010: David Rumsey Map Collection, 1765 edition, A Chart of Biography – David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.