John George Bartholomew was born on 22 March 1860 in Edinburgh, the son of John Bartholomew, founder of a firm of map-makers and publishers. He was educated at Edinburgh University but did not take his degree, instead entering the draughtsman's office in his father's firm and learning cartography. In 1889, he took over the firm's management, devoting the rest of his life to cartography. His firm achieved a large output including the two great atlases of Scotland (1895) and of England and Wales (1903), and the Physical Atlas of the World, planned to appear in several volumes, of which only two were actually published in 1899 and 1911. The Times Survey Atlas of the World (1922), produced under his direction and completed after his death, was one of his most ambitious undertakings, and he was the author of a bibliography of Antarctic literature, published in 1898. In 1884, Bartholomew became one of the founders of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, serving as joint honorary secretary until his death on 13 April 1920 at Cintra, Portugal.
From the guide to the John Bartholomew collection, 1904, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
