Website alert: The decorations on elaborate antique maps can often supply information or inspiration to fiction writers. For instance, in my current fantasy novella, there's a short passage involving a silver mine. The borders of Seutter's map of silver-mining in Saxony are full of exquisite details which supplied just the images I need. The map is found a great source, 18th century cartography, a section of World Revealed: Geography & Maps at the Library of Congress. Check it out!
Picturing a World
Thames 1829
August 28, 2023
Website alert: I think I have posted a link to the digitized Panorama of the Thames before, but it seems worth doing again for anyone who needs a soothing video trip down the Thames River in 1829. You can go upstream or down between Richmond and Westminster. Perfect escape from the news two centuries later and a great resource for historical fiction.
London charnel house
August 8, 2022
This detail from a bird's-eye map of Tudor London is taken from a blog post, In the Charnel House, about, what else? excavation of a 14th C charnel house. The post has lots of information about history, the stonework being uncovered, etc. What made me save the image, however, was its depiction of the cluster of buildings and gardens adjacent. It comes from the Agas map, for which there is a dedicated website. The site takes a bit of getting used to, but it's an invaluable resource.
Mapping the story
April 9, 2022
Kathleen Jennings' recent post on Mapping movements in stories sent me surfing the 'net. Eventually, I landed on Misty Beee's map, winner of a 2021 Atlas Award at the Cartographer's Guild. Oh, to be able to create something like it or like Jennings' whimsical communicative sketches! Actually, I do sometimes make rough maps and house plans to help me with my stories, and I highly recommend non-verbal exercises as a way to broaden a writer's experience of her worlds. Here's one adaped from Jennings' post:
Map of Leiden
June 3, 2021
Although COVID-19 quashed many events in 2020 intended to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, there were always books. During the lockdown, I read Jeremy Bangs' Strangers and Pilgrims: Travellers and Sojourner about the Pilgrims' earlier years in Leiden, Holland. Pieter Bast's 17th C aerial map of the city allowed me to wander Leiden's streets and visualize the neighborhood where Pastor John Robinson's congregation lived—as well as the larger city where so many other lives were being led.
Hargus Creek
June 1, 2021
Jeanette Palmer, the central character in Where the Light Falls, is from Circleville, Ohio. One of my readers was surprised to hear that Circleville is a real place. It is and, as far as I can tell, lives up to its perfect name as the quintessential Midwestern small town. A paragraph in a 1909 diary I'm reading describes a late-June storm in Circleville so dark that fireflies came out at 5:00 p.m. The diarist and the people she is visiting play bridge, escort another visitor to the streetcar, "and then took in the picture show but declined to go with the crowd to see Hargus Creek out of bounds."