In November 1997, two colleagues at Manchester Astronomical Society, Mike Oates and Tony Cross, and I identified, with the help of Peter Hingley, an old star atlas that had been in our library for over 50 years as an Atlas Celeste: an original, bound set of charts from John Bevis’s unpublished atlas Uranographia, ca. 1750. It was the 16th copy known (see Ashworth 1981) and started a quest to learn more about this rare atlas (Kilburn 2007). In about 1745, the London doctor and amateur astronomer Dr John Bevis FRS proposed to compile a modern British star atlas, Uranographia Britannica. He enlisted the help of John Neale, an instrument maker or toy maker of Leadenhall Street, who sought to finance the project with advance subscriptions from those wealthy enough. A copy of the 1746 list of subscribers is held at Glasgow University Library (Sp. Coll. f465). Uranographia was based on Flamsteed’s star positions and Halley’s observations of the southern hemisphere, together with additional stars from Bevis’s own transit observations between 1738 and 1739. In 1750, as Bevis’s atlas was in the process of being printed, disaster struck. Neale was declared bankrupt, the copper plates were sequestered by the London Courts of Chancery and the project was abruptly terminated. It was not until 1785, long after the deaths of Neale and Bevis, that Bevis’s library was auctioned by the widow of his executor, James Horsfall FRS. According to the auction catalogue, which survives in the Whipple Museum, Cambridge, three near-complete atlases were sold, together with an unknown number of pre-printed star charts. These surplus star charts were compiled into an unknown number of atlases and sold cheap, in 1786, as Atlas Celeste. A typical Atlas Celeste comprises: an elaborate frontispiece showing the Muse, Urania, offering a star atlas to a seated man, Frederick, Prince of Wales, with Greenwich Observatory in the background; and 51 star charts, Tab I to LI, each carrying a dedication to institutions or individuals who subscribed to the project. A few atlases have a simple index thought to have been printed in 1786, together with an exceedingly rare title sheet advertising it as Atlas Celeste. Manchester’s Atlas Celeste is considered to be the most complete and original. Of the three, near-complete Uranographia, one was bought at the Sotheby & Wilkinson sale, London, on 21 January 1856 by the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. It was formerly owned by Sir George Shuckburgh-Evelyn (1751–1804). This is the atlas on which Ashworth based his 1981 seminal description. Another less complete copy, also identified by Ashworth, is at St John’s Library, Cambridge. The third went unidentified, until November 2011.