Plotted

The Age - Spectrum 29 September 2018 has a two page article - 'From one world to another' - which discussed two books showing how authors use landscapes in fiction. John Sutherland has edited a collection of essays published as Literary Landscapes: charting the worlds of classic literature. The seventy illustrated essays  include three Australian works of fiction including Kate Grenville's, The Secret River, Patrick White's Voss and Tim Winton's Cloudstreet. Another new book on a similar topic is The Writer's Map: an atlas of imaginary lands edited by Huw Lewis-Jones.

These titles are not available in my local libraries as yet but I did find a copy of Plotted: a literary atlas by Andrew DeGraff and Daniel Harmon. The book evolved from deGraff's desire to provide spatial context for his favourite landscapes of literature. He chose nineteen titles including Robinson Crusoe, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, and A Wrinkle in Time. Arranging the books in chronological order deGraff then presents his visual presentation usually in one double page but sometimes multiple pages. Daniel Harmon has written a short essay for each title.

The representations are not maps in the true sense but the artist's graphical interpretation of movement or relationships in the story. The 'map' for Pride and Prejudice consists of a series of different coloured intersecting buildings representing major characters. DeGraff provides a different way of looking at the plot of a book.

Google Maps

For a project on which I have been working I have been experimenting with using Google Maps to show the route of a heritage walk.

Link to History Begins at Home Heritage Walk

Google Maps allows you to trace a route and place markers of key places of interest which appear on the online map. When the map is printed the online additions do not appear. The street map however is quite clear when printed in landscape.

I am still experimenting with Google Maps and on my next attempt I hope to get the result I am looking for and hopefully will not make errors when tracing the route next attempt. I will also add the location symbols for some of the main places of interest - this is a wok in progress.

It is possible to provide a copy of the map for printing showing the route and location symbols by taking a screen dump of the map, saving it and then editing the image in a program such as Firefox or PhotoShop. The image for printing can then be inserted in an html page with instructions to set the printing options to landscape.

The image of the map map can also be edited in Firefox or Photoshop.