Overview

Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travellers, explorers and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people's lives, places and spaces, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by writers and artists. In turn, maps generate more stories, taking users on new journeys in search of knowledge and adventure.Drawing on the Bodleian Library's outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, 'Talking Maps' takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined. Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic 'Book of Curiosities', al-Sharif al-Idrisi's twelfth-century world map, C.S. Lewis's map of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology of Middle-earth and Grayson Perry's twenty-first-century tapestry map, this fascinating book analyses maps as objects that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, even empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future.By telling the stories behind the artefacts and those generated by them, 'Talking Maps' reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by describing where we are.

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9781851245154

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Reviews

'A book dedicated to the romantic, the beautiful, the mysterious, the intriguing and the fascinating … beautifully produced, copiously illustrated in full-colour, excellent value and a joy to behold.' * Sheetlines (The Journal of The Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps) * 'The weight and size of the book promised a plethora of detail, images and various carthographic representations, and unsurprisingly I was not disappointed. … incredibly interesting and informative … an exceptional piece of literature that does well to selectively choose a range of maps and cartographies from a collection of over one and a half million. ... Brotton and Millea have done a fantastic job and have achieved their aim to celebrate the creation, function and purpose of maps, using specific examples that cover nearly two millenia.' * The Bulletin of the Society of Cartographers * 'While there is something for everyone in Talking Maps, it is not just a breezy coffee-table tome.' * IMCOS (International Map Collectors Society) * 'This is a well-designed and presented book. There are many maps spread throughout the pages and theses are discussed and analysed in a very easy to digest manner. … A very good read.’ * The Globe *

'A book dedicated to the romantic, the beautiful, the mysterious, the intriguing and the fascinating ... beautifully produced, copiously illustrated in full-colour, excellent value and a joy to behold.' * Sheetlines (The Journal of The Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps) * 'The weight and size of the book promised a plethora of detail, images and various carthographic representations, and unsurprisingly I was not disappointed. ... incredibly interesting and informative ... an exceptional piece of literature that does well to selectively choose a range of maps and cartographies from a collection of over one and a half million. ... Brotton and Millea have done a fantastic job and have achieved their aim to celebrate the creation, function and purpose of maps, using specific examples that cover nearly two millenia.' * The Bulletin of the Society of Cartographers * 'While there is something for everyone in Talking Maps, it is not just a breezy coffee-table tome.' * IMCOS (International Map Collectors Society) * 'This is a well-designed and presented book. There are many maps spread throughout the pages and theses are discussed and analysed in a very easy to digest manner. ... A very good read.' * The Globe *

Author Information

Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Nick Millea is the Map Librarian at the Bodleian Library.

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