cartographer and map and atlas publisher who improved the standards of British cartography and introduced into Great Britain the use of contours and systematic colour layering to show relief.

The eldest son of the Edinburgh map publisher John Bartholomew (1831–93), he concerned himself with producing new geographical works as well as with technical improvements in map production. He published major atlases of Scotland (1895) and England and Wales (1903) and initiated a great physical atlas, but only two volumes appeared, the Atlas of Meteorology (1899) and the Atlas of Zoogeography (1911). He also began compiling The Times Survey Atlas of the World, published in 1921 by his son John Bartholomew (1890–1962), who also edited the new Times Atlas of the World (1955).