Today's video is all about literary maps and books that explore the real and
imaginary landscapes of our favorite novels in detail/
The first book I'd like to review is 'The Writer's Map' edited by Huw Lewis Jones.
This is probably my favorite of all this type of book in my collection. It's a
magnificent atlas of imaginary lands and a collection of essays by and about
writing. It's packed full of large glorious full-color illustrations. The essays
cover not only maps that appear in the books, but also writer's sketches, notes by
map illustrators, and real-life locations that inspire them. The maps explored in
this book range from adventure books to fantasy novels, and even comics and
nursery rhymes. The prologue by Philip Pullman recounts the experience of
drawing a map as he set out on one of his early novels, 'The Tin Princess'.
Cressida Cowell explains the inspiration for maps of numerous children's books
when drawing her illustrations in 'How to Train Your Dragon'; Miraphora Mina recalls
the creative challenge of drawing up the Marauder's Map for the Harry Potter films;
David Mitchell leads us to the Mappa Mundi by way of Cloud Atlas in his own
sketch maps; and Daniel Reeve shares his fascinating history making maps to the
Lord of the Rings.
In contrast, Literary Landscapes edited by John Sutherland charts the real-life
settings of classic fiction. It covers 73 books with a couple of
pages on each, including a short biography of the author along with pictures and
publication details for the first edition. The text entries discuss how the
setting and other attributes of the literary environment influence the
story, the characters, and the impact on the reader. It provides very interesting
context to a fascinating collection of literature. A word of warning though - the
electronic version contains none of the images so you definitely want to see
this one in print.
Also in series with the previous book is 'Literary Wonderlands', edited by Laura
Miller, which does the same thing for fictional landscapes, ranging from
Beowulf to Murakami's IQ84. The essays herein discuss the relevance of the
writers' own lives to the creation of their worlds, as well as exploring
influences from contemporary events and philosophies on their work.
The lovely covers for these two books are by the brilliant Jim Tierney, by the way.
His cover art always catches my eye along a bookshelf.
Next we have a one-man
artist affair called 'Plotted' by Andrew DeGraff and Daniel Harmon.
This book is an eclectic copy offering landscape maps of literary classics that seek
to create "a sense of contour, sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical." The
maps range from tracing the movements of Odysseus around the Mediterranean, to the
path walked by Hamlet through the rooms of Elsinore castle, to the 'romantic journey'
of the characters in Pride and Prejudice.
The same artist also created an atlas called 'Cinemaps' which does the same thing
for classic movies, for example charting the path of true love from the Princess
Bride. Unfortunately I found the color
reproductions a little muddy in this volume, but they're interesting
interpretations nonetheless.
Honing in now on single locations, "Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth" offers a
fascinating look into the creative process of the man who famously once
wrote "I wisely started with a map and made the story fit." The book includes
essays on a number of different themes including on the "concept of fairy as an
enchanted literary realm" and the influence of the author's visual
imagination and mapping the Lord of the Rings. Next, this leads me to a lovely set
of middle-earth maps illustrated by John Howe. These maps come in a boxrf set of
four, while some of them can be purchased separately.
They include essays by Brian Sibley on the importance and evolution of
geography within Tolkien's epic fiction, as well as full color fold-out maps.
I actually have a few of these types of literary conceits in my library -
meaning maps of fantastical places that have been created as though they're real
places. The first I'll show here is Brian Jacques's map of Redwall, which comes with
a copy of 'The Redwall Riddler' containing riddles and puzzles
based on the series.
I also have a fun set of maps set in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Each is
accompanied by a booklet of information, as well as a full map of the Discworld.
There's also a street map for Ankh-Morpork, a tourist guide to Lancre, and a map
of Death's Domain.
Also available is a huge street directory covering all the districts that comes
with a pull-out map. And last, but definitely not least, what would a
literary maps video be without including a copy of the Marauder's Map?! I've seen
several versions of this, but my favorite is the one published by the Noble
Collection. Folded up, this is still a large map at 15 and a half by 8 inches,
but it unfolds out fully to 6 feet long!
It's printed on heavy parchment paper and contains lots of little secret
panels that unfold to reveal hidden details.
Thanks for watching! Like, comment or subscribe and join me next time for a
YouTube game I'm working on where you can play along to guess the book from
the map. Bye!