The notion of a map is one that many great writers over the centuries have puzzled over, and there seems to be no end to the way that maps can inspire. For a writer, the pleasure of a map has a unique correspondence to the act of writing. Books are combinations of words gathered to stand for a real or imaginary experience. Maps are combinations of symbols that stand for a real or historical place.
This connection is one that’s made more than one writer an avid collector of world maps . There are thousands of references to maps in literature from all over the world, and enough to suggest that they have a unique place in the literary arts. They can be used as devices in a story, like a prop, that opens up new territories for the characters. Or they can also, like in the case of Lewis Carroll be used to give a delightfully uncanny credibility to an imaginary realm.
Writers use maps, then, and use them to all of their advantage. They don’t become the simple object, like globes in a study that no one ever looks at. They become entrance points into the imagination, where real events, memories, and journeys, can be recalled in solitude, in order to wake up the muses that will bring the story to life.
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