# Novels With Maps of Imaginary Places **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [August 13, 2022, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583 "2022-08-13T03:05:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/41 "2022-08-14T20:12:57Z")
The Ultima IV video game came with a fabric map. I still have it someplace… Ursula LeGuin’s _Earthsea_ books came with maps. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/42 "2022-08-14T21:51:52Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Fonstad’s “Atlas of Middle Earth” was key to my grokking of **The Silmarillion**. I had both books on my lap at the same time, to cross reference what was going on in Sil. Correlating those fine maps with the text/topic made the book 3 x as enjoyable and comprehensible to me. I need to try this. Never been able to make much headway into **The Silmarillion**. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/43 "2022-08-15T13:42:58Z")
Jules Verne’s books frequently had maps in them (although modern reprints rarely do). In fact, after you’ve read quite a few of them you realize that Verne was all about geography. Verne clearly wrote most of his novels with a map at his elbow and used it in tracing the movements of his characters. If you’re reading a Verne novel, having a map helps a lot, so I usually go on the internet and download a copy of the map that was included. Certainly a map helps with **Around the World in 80 days** (of course!) **Cesar Cascabel** **Five Weeks in a Balloon** **Kereban the Inflexible** **The Fur Country** **Captain Antifer** (not famous, but probably the most reliant upon the map – it’s a treasure-hunt story) **The Children of Captain Grant/In Search of the Castaways** **The Mighty Orinoco** **Propeller Island** **Meridiana** … and plenty of others. Even books that are more fantastic in their nature, and which you might not think of as relying on maps really do. **Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea** follows a very definite course. In fact, Verne builds tension when the _Nautilus_ goes into the Red Sea, because you know there’s no way she was going to try going through the just-opened Suez Canal, so how was the ship going to get out? He also uses a map of the moon in **From the Earth to the Moon** and **Around the Moon** , describing the surface in detail as the astronauts orbit it. John Myers Myers’ 1949 novel **Silverlock** has a very detailed map of The Commonwealth of Letters. Jonathan Swift’s **Gulliver’s Travels** has already been mentioned, but it has a LOT more maps than the island of Laputa – there are maps of each of the fabulous lands Gulliver visits. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/44 "2022-08-15T16:25:29Z")
Count me in as another map lover. They definitely enhance the books where they appear. @CalMeacham I may be misremembering since it’s over 40 years since I read it, but I think that Verne’s _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ includes at least 1 map. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/45 "2022-08-15T16:46:07Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > > [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > > > Was LOTR first? > > Not even close. > > Dante’s Inferno from the 14th century includes a map of Hell. > [@Moonrise](#): > > There’s a very evocative map in **William Hope Hodgson** ’s _[The Night Land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Land)_ (1912). > [@eburacum45](#): > > The Bronte siblings (Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell) wrote and illustrated an imaginary history of an imaginary world; the Empire of Angria, Glass Town and Gondal. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > Trollope included maps of Barsetshire in his 6 Barsetshire novels. Written in 1850s-60s. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > C. S. Lewis and his brother Warren Lewis as children created an imaginary land called Boxen. They wrote stories and made maps of this land. > [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > The first Oz book to include a map was _Tik-Tok of Oz_ . […] > > I’m pretty sure _Islandia_ by August Tappan Wright had a map. > > _Gulliver’s Travels_ has maps. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Jules Verne’s books frequently had maps in them Not counting the juvenilia from the Brontes and Lewis, and the “fake parts of real countries” from some of the others, I think the best candidate for “first ‘true’ fantasy-land map” is still [that in William Morris’s 1897 The Sundering Flood.](https://twitter.com/arrroberts/status/1543160603002511361) (And that one seems to have been a known influence on Tolkien.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/46 "2022-08-15T16:58:29Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > Count me in as another map lover. They definitely enhance the books where they appear. > @CalMeacham I may be misremembering since it’s over 40 years since I read it, but I think that Verne’s _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ includes at least 1 map. None of the editions I have include maps – I have at least three paperback editions, but those are notorious for leaving out the maps. More to the point, the online editions, including at Project Gutenberg, lack maps. It could be that there’s an edition out there with maps, but I haven’t found one. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583/47 "2022-08-15T17:25:47Z")
Alas, this fairly exhaustive collection of Verne maps lacks one for _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ > **[Maps from the Extraordinary Voyages: Original Hetzel maps | Garmt’s Jules...](https://verne-garmtdevries-nl.translate.goog/en/maps/originals.html?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)** > > Maps from the Extraordinary Voyages: the original maps from the Hetzel editions [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novels-with-maps-of-imaginary-places/969583.md?page=2)