Magna Britannia

Title page of Volume 4 (Cumberland)

Magna Britannia, being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain (to give its full title) was an ambitious topographical and historical survey published by the antiquarians Daniel Lysons and his brother Samuel Lysons in several volumes between 1806 and 1822. It covers the counties of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, and Devon. The work was curtailed in 1819 on Samuel Lysons' death.

Unlike other similar works published in the 17th and 18th centuries, Magna Britannia remains of value today because the Lysons brothers included content on topics such as population, manufacture and commerce. They were also far less preoccupied than many antiquarians with coats of arms and pedigrees, and did not overstate the grandeur of the counties, as local topographers were apt to do.

An earlier work under the same title had been compiled by Thomas Cox.^[1]

Volumes

• Volume 1
• Volume 2, Cambridgeshire and the County Palatine of Chester, 1810
• Volume 3, Cornwall, London, 1814
• Volume 4, Cumberland, 1816
• Volume 5, Derbyshire, 1817
• Volume 6, Devonshire, 1822

See also

• William Camden's Britannia

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: entries for Daniel and Samuel Lysons.

Notes

External links

• Digitised volumes at HathiTrust. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
• Digitised volumes at Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
• Digitised volumes of Magna Britannia at British History Online. Retrieved 13 March 2015.