X marks the spot

Yesterday's post got me thinking about all the books I have about maps and map-making as well as the many other artists I have found who use maps in their work. More of them another day perhaps, but these pictures are from a couple of interesting books I searched out from my shelves , the first being 'The Atlas of Experience' by Louise van Swaaij and Jean Klare. From the Bay of Wisdom to the Sea of Plenty and up to the Sea of Ideas, The Atlas of Experience covers the water-front and explores all the inland territories of life's moods, emotions and other states of being.

On the map of Chaos, a mountain range is labelled the Heights of Exasperation and a city named Entree is located on the map of Haute Cuisine. In the map from Here to Everywhere you can sail and get carried away or go by air and fly in the face of destiny. Either way, the direction you take is towards infinity.

This atlas is also included in one of my favourite books. It's called 'You are Here' and it's put together by Katharine Harmon. Subtitled Personal Geographies and Other maps of the Imagination it is a wide ranging collection of superbly inventive maps. These are not your traditional maps - they're the maps to heaven and hell, maps of moods and mythical places. There are maps to popular culture, from Gulliver's Travels to Gilligan's Island, speculative maps of the world before it was known and maps to secret places known only to the mapmaker. It is a book I come back to and find something to interest me every time.

Geographical Guide to a Woman's Heart Emphasising Points of Interest to the Romantic Traveller

Geographical Guide to a Man's Heart with Obstacles and Entrances Clearly Marked

These two maps were inspired by a pair of Victorian lithographs but produced for a magazine in 1960. I love the titles, particularly the fact that there are obstacles to a man's heart. Really?

There are pages of books where maps were integral to the story. As a woman of a certain age I'll always be able to picture the maps on the covers and end pages of Swallows and Amazons and I'll never forget poring over the maps just inside my first copy of The Hobbit. There's even a great episode in Roald Dahl's The BFG where the Head of the Air Force and the Head of the Army are chasing after the BFG and fly completely out of the atlas finding themselves in the blank pages that are at the end of every atlas. When they ask the pilot where they are he tells them they always put blank pages at the back of the atlas. 'They're for new countries,' he says,' You're meant to fill them in yourself'.