The Writer's Map

All Souls College in Oxford is a unique academic institution and has had a unique history. But its history has been little known and its fortunes in the period 1600-1850 have been viewed, if at all, through the eyes of the Victorian university 'reformers'. This volume explores for the first time the 'ancien regime' in All Souls on its own terms. It brings together sixteen substantial studies of some of the college's most significant figures, among them the architect and polymath Christopher Wren and the great eighteenth-century lawyer William Blackstone. Its chapters trace the involvement of the College's fellows in the wider world: as key figures in the developing legal profession in London, negotiating the complexities of the English Civil War and the Restoration, as active in national and ecclesiastical politics, as innovators of early modern 'science' and technology, as participants in philosophical and intellectual debate, as significant patrons of art and architecture with European connections, and as administrators of British imperial interests and missionary efforts in the Caribbean and India.It's one of the first things we discover as children, reading and drawing: Maps have a unique power to transport us to distant lands on wondrous travels. Put a map at the start of a book, and we know an adventure is going to follow. Displaying this truth with beautiful full-color illustrations, The Writer's Map is an atlas of the journeys that our most creative storytellers have made throughout their lives. This magnificent collection encompasses not only the maps that appear in their books but also the many maps that have inspired them, the sketches that they used while writing, and others that simply sparked their curiosity. Philip Pullman recounts the experience of drawing a map as he set out on one of his early novels, The Tin Princess. 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 and his own sketch maps. Robert Macfarlane reflects on the cartophilia that has informed his evocative nature writing, which was set off by Robert Louis Stevenson and his map of Treasure Island. Joanne Harris tells of her fascination with Norse maps of the universe. Reif Larsen writes about our dependence on GPS and the impulse to map our experience. Daniel Reeve describes drawing maps and charts for The Hobbit film trilogy. This exquisitely crafted and illustrated atlas explores these and so many more of the maps writers create and are inspired by--some real, some imagined--in both words and images. Amid a cornucopia of 167 full-color images, we find here maps of the world as envisaged in medieval times, as well as maps of adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, nursery rhymes, literary classics, and collectible comics. An enchanting visual and verbal journey, The Writer's Map will be irresistible for lovers of maps, literature, and memories--and anyone prone to flights of the imagination.