The Atlas of Literature

Collection of encyclopedic two to six page essays on literature of, about, and from a geographic and chronological location. It works best as a reference work, and gave me reading suggestions that will represent a year's worth of well-spent hours. Suffers from the encyclopedia effect of many contributors with different styles and focuses, and is too specific in some areas and broad in others, but those are marginal quibbles about a great $2 find at a library used book sale.

Hogwart's School? It's in England somewhere. Is it real or imagined? Jefferson, Mississippi, in Yoknapatawpha County. That one is real, right? Place names in literature. Some are so real as to defy the reality of their imagined creation. J.K. Rowling and William Faulkner set stories in time and places that are now mythic in purport. George Orwell simply chose real places to turn his anti-fascist sensibilities. There is nothing the least bit imagined about Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn's gulag prisons. Finding these places, real and imagined, on the map makes "The Atlas of Literature" a welcome addition to one's personal library. Editor Malcolm Bradbury worked four years with contributers in putting together this geographical history of literature beginning with the medieval period and concluding with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when the world once again changed dramatically. I arbitrarily selected one writer to demonstrate what this atlas does. The chapter is called "James Fenimore Cooper's Frontier." One map depicts the "Acquisition of Indian Territory" and "Expansion of European Settlement," two topics that dominated Cooper's writing. One set of novels was concerned with Leatherstocking, who represented this western movement. Another map shows the settings of the five novels in the saga. Two paintings by N.C. Wyeth highlight two of the books. A painting by Romantic nature painter Thomas Cole depicts the "romantic vision of the dying wilderness...as the march of civilization prospered" (85). I turn from chapter to chapter trying to settle on one more section and think, How do I choose? It is ALL fascinating. I am looking at locations which influenced writers, locations writers influenced, places where they gathered to talk of life and love and their work--Paris, London, Harlem, Jerusalem. So I choose a place that readers may be least familiar with and invite them to taste the riches of the literature of this region, this place, this map. It is Nigeria. Chinua Achebe in "Things Fall Apart" writes of a changing Africa from tribalism to colonialism in early twentieth century. The first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Wole Soyinka is renowned for his memoir, "Ake: The Years of Childhood." A younger Nigerian, Ben Okri, now an English citizen, won the Booker prize for "The Famished Road," a legend-based fantasy set in Nigeria. The maps and insets, photographs of the writers, covers of books, scenes from locales--all combine to provide a history of these places in literature. Contemporary Israeli writing, Andalusia's Arabic literature, the Canadian scene, Australia's literary map, a chapter on Broadway of the 1950's and 1960's (by the way, that is young Arthur Miller looking from behind Virginia Woolf on the cover of the Atlas), Post-war Italian fiction, German fiction, Existential Paris, the Spanish Civil War, Mark Twain's Mississippi, Oxford and Cambridge, Dante's Italy. I think you can see how diverse the content is. I would

An A to Z comprehensive guide through the long road of Literature.Almost everything about books and authors were covered in this atlas. From Austen to Zweig.Categorized into various notable sections.Namely,The Middle Ages and The Renaissance, The Age of Reason, The Romantics,The Age of Industrialism and Empire, The Age of Realism, The Modern World,After the 2nd World War and the World Today. Each part were comprehensively arranged and illustrated with famous examples and represented by the authors from that era. It covered almost all the important events and people in Literature. I enjoyed this atlas because each part was unique yet vitally contributed to the whole. It's handy to get all these Literary information compressed into a single book. It also gave a brief biographies of authors and showed their birthplace and journeys through their life and their famous works and contributions to the society. Well-done with great pictures and informative maps,notes,facts and figures. It showed the trends of Literary world and how it shaped our lives and affected our thoughts.

I found this book to be a wonderful addition to my library. It is truly a feast for lovers of literature. I have only one dissenting comment. Why the omission of Gore Vidal? With the inclusion of Norman Mailer, surely this omission is an oversight and not calculated. Overall, though, a marvelous book.