James Wyld

James Wyld (1812–1887) was a British geographer and map-seller, best known for Wyld's Great Globe.

He was the eldest son of James Wyld the Elder (1790–1836) and Eliza (née Legg). In 1838, he married Anne, the daughter of John Hester, and had two children, one of whom, James John Cooper Wyld also became a map publisher.

On his father's death in 1836, Wyld became the sole owner of the thriving family mapmaking business based in Charing Cross. His maps, which covered regions as diverse as London and the gold fields of California, were regarded highly, and Wyld himself had an excellent reputation as a mapmaker; he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1839, and he was appointed Geographer to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (as had been his father before him). ), but his projects were not always successful; although he profited from the "Railway Mania" of the later 1830s, he became entangled in a number of court cases with unsuccessful railway companies as a result,

He was also the Liberal MP for Bodmin, though his political career was on hiatus for much of the time that he managed the Great Globe. On his first election in 1848 there were charges of bribery at the polling stations, although it was decided that these accusations could not be substantiated, and he was allowed to take up his seat. His idea for the Great Globe had been many years in the formulation: a correspondent of Notes and Queries mentioned that as early as 1839, Wyld had broached the subject of a concave globe at a meeting to discuss an earlier giant globe project. This plan by William Vialls for a georama in London never progressed past the planning stage