Mike Stiles wrote this review which first ran on Green Man Review.
This is a must-have compendium for your coffee table, even if you don’t own a coffee table. The authors have combined their formidable editorial talents with insightful illustrations and maps from Graham Greenfield, Eric Beddows, and James Cook to produce a classic.
Most of the material comes from literary works spanning roughly the time period from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth. At the ancient extremes we find that the map of Atlantis stems mostly from the descriptions of Plato, with additional tourist data from Pierre Benoit and Arthur Conan Doyle. At the more modern extremes, Beatles fans are informed that “travelers will immediately notice that the keynote of Pepperland is colour.”
While it is absolutely impossible for a work like this to be comprehensive, Manguel and Guadalupi sure have given the effort a run for its money. Emphasis is placed on the popular works of the fantastic. The unreal regions created by Poe, Tolkien, Jarry, Lovecraft, and others in the genre receive their just due.
Basically, to qualify for inclusion in this Dictionary, a place imagined in an ethnic tradition has to have made its way to the literature of Europe. Thus we find Arabia and China well represented, but not the Native Americans or sub-Saharan Africans. Perhaps the present work will inspire greatly-needed compilations of comparable quality from the four corners of the globe.
Because the source material derives from literary works, imaginary places from seminal and religious writings are not covered directly. For example, the Land of Youth from ancient Irish mythology, Tir Na nOg, does not appear as an entry per se. Places like the Summer Country and Prydain of Lloyd Alexander do.
Besides providing helpful maps and tourist info, the entries by necessity include a thumbnail sketch of the stories from which they come. The authors also mine some fairly obscure materials from the libraries of Europe. These aspects alone make this book an invaluable resource for readers and writers alike.
But the best thing about The Dictionary of Imaginary Places is that anytime, anywhere, you can open up at random and expect both a chuckle and a marvel at the workings of the human imagination. It’s going proudly by the side of my copy of Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings.
(Harcourt, 2000)
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