Who were John Cooke? This is a shortened version of the introduction to Kit Batten's monograph on John Cooke and appeared in slightly different form in the IMCoS Journal - the journal of the International Map Collectors Society in Autumn 2011. For those who wish to see the article as printed it has been published on the web - click here . If you wish to find out more about IMCoS and its annnual meetings - the association for map lovers - click here . The monograph lists all 36 works produced by John Cooke between 1790 and 1845 with an illustration of each map. The monograph has been updated and the Second Edition can be read here on my blog. At first sight the title looks grammatically wrong but a glance inside Tooley ´s Dictionary of Mapmakers [1] presents us with three separate people called John Cooke. This article is an attempt to unravel their careers which inexplicably have become intermingled over the years. First of all let us clear up one point: t he father an