17th-century adult colouring-in book ready for modern hues

Albion’s Glorious Ile, a magical poem engraved to hymn ‘the pleasures infinite’ of England and Wales, republished for 21st century

Adults finding time for colouring-in books might seem a modern fad, part of the fashion for all things mindful. But the trend actually dates back more than 400 years, and one of the earliest books intended for amateur colouring – a series of maps adorned with delicately drawn images of nymphs, water sprites and fairies – is about to be republished, centuries after it was first printed.

The maps in Albion’s Glorious Ile, out in June from Unicorn Press, were commissioned to illustrate the poet Michael Drayton’s 17th-century, 15,000-line poem, Poly-Olbion. Describing England and Wales – Drayton didn’t get round to Scotland – the vast poem tours the country, county by county, evoking the topographical features and legends of each location. “Of Albions glorious Ile the wonders … I write, / The sundry varying soyles, the pleasures infinite,” writes Drayton, in the poem he dubbed his “strange Herculean labour” and spent 30 years honing.

Related: Modern tribes: the colouring-in devotee

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