Emanuel Bowen (1694 – 8 May 1767) was a  Welsh  map engraver, who achieved the unique

distinction of becoming Royal Mapmaker to both to  King George II of Great Britain  and  Louis XV

of France . Bowen was highly regarded by his contemporaries for producing some of the largest,

most detailed and most accurate maps of his era. He is known to have worked with most British

cartographic figures of the period including John Owen and  Herman Moll . Bowen was born at 

Tal-y-Llychau (now  Talley ),  Carmarthenshire ,  Wales . His father was Owen

Bowen, a prominent member of the local  gentry  ("a distinguished but not noble gentleman”). In

1709, Emanuel Bowen was apprenticed as a  merchant tailor  to Charles Price.

Bowen worked in London from 1714 and was admitted to the Merchant Taylors Livery Company

on 3 October 1716.One of his earliest engraved works,  Britannia Depicta , published in 1720,

contained over two hundred road maps together with a miniature county map of each of the counties

of England and Wales. It followed on  John Ogilby's earlier work with updated style of historical and

heraldic detail. It was an unusual feature of the atlas that the maps were engraved on both sides of

each page, resulting in a handier-sized book. By 1726 he was noted as one of the leading London

engravers. Among his multiple apprentices, the most notable were  Thomas Kitchin ,  Thomas

Jeffreys  and John Lodge. Another apprentice,  John Oakman  who had an affair with and eventually

married, Bowen's daughter. Other Bowen apprentices include Thomas Buss, John Pryer, Samuel

Lyne, William Fowler and his own son  Thomas Bowen . He published A Complete System of

Geography, 1744–7; an English Atlas, with a new set of maps, 1745(?); a Complete Atlas ... in

sixty-eight Maps,1752; Atlas Minimus; or a new set of Pocket Maps,1758; and a series of

separate maps of the English counties, of Germany, Asia Minor, and Persia, between 1736 and

1776. A recurring feature of Bowen's work, evident even on the early road maps, was his habit of

filling every corner and space of the map with jottings and footnotes, both historical and

topographical.

In spite of his royal patronage and renown, Bowen like many cartographers of his day, would die in

poverty. His son, Thomas Bowen (1733–1790) would carry on the business, but would ultimately

suffer a similar fate, dying in a  Clerkenwell  workhouse in 1790.