Whitwell, Cathrine Vale. An astronomical catechism: or, Dialogues between a mother and her daughter. London, 1818.
Whitwell’s Catechism is the only book we know on the constellations that is written in dialogue form. Even more unusual, the striking plates were all drawn by the author herself. Whitwell would shortly become an instructor at Robert Owen’s school at New Lanarck, and would be responsible for drawing the large visual aids that Owen favored.
The frontispiece, shown above, is one of three spectacular colored plates in this work (there are twenty-three plates in all, only five of which show star maps or constellations). Whitwell says in the caption that she copied it from one of the plates in Flamsteed’s Atlas, and she repeats this statement in the text. But it seems that Whitwell was not being very truthful to her young daughter, since she actually copied it from Bode’s Uranographia, as a comparison makes evident (only three prior atlases showed constellation boundaries – all by Bode and only the 1801 edition added the two small loops to Hydra’s tail). That said, this has to be one of the most beautifully colored star maps to appear anywhere.
In the text that discusses this plate, Whitwell tells her daughter that, although many identify Corvus with the Crow that was the attribute of Apollo, Corvus actually represents the raven that Noah sent out from the Ark. Crater, the cup, must be the hallowed libation base that Noah used to make offerings. And Hydra represents the Nile. Whitwell here and elsewhere fashioned an elaborate Judeo-Christian mythology to instruct her daughter in the meaning of the heavens.