★★★★☆ Collected maps of fantasy lands

An Atlas of Fantasy

J.B. Post

Seanan McGuire recently published a story-like thing called A Traveler's Guide to Fantastic Countries. It purports to be advertising copy for a travel agency that can arrange trips to such places as Avalon, Niflheim, and The Lost City of Z. This naturally made me think of other, less tongue-in-cheek reference works of fantastic lands. Two that I used to own are this one, An Atlas of Fantasy and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic (which I will also review one of these days).

J.B. Post was the map librarian of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and also an avid fantasy reader. (I get these facts from Lester del Rey's introduction.) Because of this he was aware of something most readers didn't know: that maps existed of the lands in which many fantasy stories take place. Many of these maps were unpublished. For instance, C.S. Lewis drew a map of Narnia, a reproduction of which can be found in the Bodleian Library. That map is included in this book.

When I got this book recently, I asked myself which was the first fantasy I ever read that included a map. I answered myself, The Lord of the Rings. But I was wrong. A glance through the table of contents listed two other fantasy maps that I certainly saw before I ever read LOTR: "Environs of Toad Hall" from The Wind in the Willows and "Pooh's Turf" from the Winnie the Pooh books. Both were instantly familiar. I even remembered the signature below the Pooh map, "DRAWN BY ME AND MR SHEPARD HELPED". ME here means A.A. Milne's son Christopher Robin -- Mr Shepard is Pooh illustrator Ernest H. Shephard. J.R.R. Tolkien's maps are of course also included -- seven of them.

The maps are all black-and-white. They are not in any particular order that I can identify. I suppose Post had some reason for the order he chose, but I don't know what it is. And there's no index. On the other hand, there are only about a hundred maps here -- it is not terribly difficult to scan the entire table of contents looking for anything you want.

This is a book one could read from cover to cover and enjoy. Unfortunately, the used copy I managed to get hold of is not in any condition for such use. I will hope that someone someday scans it and makes it available in electronic form.

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AnonymousJune 29, 2024 at 2:52 PM
I had a poster of a map of fairyland (fairy tales) when i was alittle girl,spent alot of time looking at it. I just found a similar poster that i bought for my grandson!
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