For some reason, I belong to all of these membership shopping sites. They send me daily notices of their “special” sales, which usually just annoy me; seldom do I click through and look at their wares. But I did click on the Fab link the other day, and found some really neat pictorial maps of the scenes, plots, characters and places of some classic books, including Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, and Robin Hood, produced by the Harris-Seybold Company of Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s, presumably to showcase their cutting-edge printing equipment. These are different from the make-believe maps you find in children’s books (Neverland, Middle Earth) because they are representations of real places, superimposed with fictional characters (well, all of them except for Treasure Island). The Library of Congress also featured these maps, in its exhibition and accompanying book Language of the Land: Journeys into a Literary America.
Harris-Seybold Literary Maps of Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, and The Virginian, 1953, Library of Congress, and of Robin Hood and Treasure Island, 1953, Fab.com.
So much better than those old-fashioned literary maps where authors’ heads are placed on their state or town–but many of these can be found in the Library of Congress’s exhibition as well. I spent considerable time (now lost) trying to make a literary map for Salem based on Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables following this Google Earth procedure, with less than impressive results. Instead, I’m featuring a cropped image from another vivid mid-century map, Alva Scott Garfield’s Scott-Map of SALEM Massachusetts “The Wealth of the Indies to the Uttermost Gulf!” Scott’s maps are always extremely well-annotated–and often very cleverly so: the caption underneath the requisite witch on her broomstick reads “aviation started in Salem” while a nearby musket-bearing Puritan is captioned “the anti-aircraft is surprised” (see below). In the proximity of the actual House of the Seven Gables she has assembled many of the characters from the House of the Seven Gables (Clifford and Hepzibah, Phoebe, Judge Pyncheon), creating a perfect literary map of this little corner of Salem. And in another corner, Scott has placed characters from The Scarlet Letter, and the author himself, near the Mall Street house where Hawthorne penned his first novel, charting more literary territory.
Alva Scott Garfield, A Scott-Map of Salem, c. 1950s, Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc.
July 18th, 2013 at 8:45 am
Kind of like old copies of Lord Of The Rings, where they include the map so you can follow the characters.
I read an old book about turtle fishermen in the Caribbean, and went and found an old map to see where the reefs they were going to were. These reefs aren’t on new maps.
July 18th, 2013 at 8:56 am
Wow,this is so cool. What a great resource for teachers, and a good way for students to learn map skills while they are enjoying the book. 🙂 I love it! 🙂 Do you mind if I put this post on my history website, tchistorygal.blogspot.com?
July 18th, 2013 at 9:05 am
Not at all–thanks for your comments.
July 18th, 2013 at 7:22 pm
Thanks. 🙂 My other one is Blogspot, so I’ll cut and paste and give you a byline and a closing as well as multiple links, if that works for you. 🙂
July 18th, 2013 at 9:42 am
Love, love LOVE this post!
July 18th, 2013 at 4:39 pm
Thanks, Mary Beth.
July 18th, 2013 at 9:43 am
Reblogged this on Mary Beth Bass.
July 18th, 2013 at 10:54 am
This is great. Now I want to get out my pens and watercolors and map out my favorite books too! Thanks for sharing this!
July 18th, 2013 at 10:56 am
[…] A wonderful wonderful post from one of my favorite blogs “Streets of Salem”. Click here for: Mapping the Book. […]
July 18th, 2013 at 1:14 pm
These are neat –
I’ve seen one for Sherlock Holmes – lots of fun.
July 18th, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Now I’m on the hunt!