The Bodleian Library is home to one of the world's largest and oldest
collections of maps, with atlases, maps, and books on cartography dating
back to the fourteenth century, including many that are among the most
rare and historically significant.
Treasures from the Map Room publishes seventy-five extraordinary
examples from this collection, housed in the Map Room at the newly
renovated Weston Library. The maps reproduced in Treasures range from
the fourteenth to the twenty-first century. Among them are the
fourteenth-century Gough Map, the earliest road map of Great Britain
that achieved a remarkable level of accuracy and detail for its time;
fifteenth-century portolan charts intended for maritime navigation; the
Selden Map of China, the earliest Chinese map to show shipping routes;
and an important early map from the medieval Islamic Book of
Curiosities. The book also includes a great many recent examples,
including J. R. R. Tolkien's map of Middle Earth and C. S. Lewis's map
of Narnia. Debbie Hall takes readers back in time to uncover the
fascinating story of each treasure, from a map plotting outbreaks of
cholera to a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s and silk escape maps
carried by pilots flying missions over occupied Europe during World War
II.
With lavish full-color photography and descriptions of each map's
provenance, purpose, and creation, Treasures from the Map Room is a
beautiful and informative catalog of this remarkable collection.
