In interesting news, the map collection of fantasy cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad is being digitised and is looking for an academic home.
Karen Wynn Fonstad was one of fantasy cartography's biggest names, best-known for her two editions of The Atlas of Middle-earth (1981, 1992). This was an attempt to create an atlas spanning the entire history of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy legendarium, including detailed maps of the lands explored in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The revised edition drew on Unfinished Tales and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series to flesh out the map collection. The Atlas had a lot of fans, with Christopher Tolkien writing warmly about its accuracy and Tolkien artist Alan Lee talking about how it was used as a reference for the making of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.
Mrs. Fonstad herself paid tribute to earlier pioneers of Middle-earth cartography, including Pauline Baynes' A Map of Middle-earth (1970), which had the advantage of enjoying feedback from Professor Tolkien himself, and Barbara Strachey's more contemporary Journeys Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1981).
Mrs. Fonstad also created other fantasy atlases, notably The Atlas of Pern (1984) based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, and The Atlas of the Land (1985), based on Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever sequence. She then collaborated with TSR, Inc. on the Dungeons & Dragons projects The Atlas of the Dragonlance World (1987) and The Forgotten Realms Atlas (1990). The Forgotten Realms Atlas remains, as far the creator of the Forgotten Realms world Ed Greenwood is concerned, definitive. Many of these maps, or portions thereof, were reused in later projects like video games and novels.
Mrs. Fonstad resumed work on real-world geographical projects and did not create any more fantasy maps, but she did write a proposal for a project called The Atlas of Narnia, based on C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia sequence, including creating some sample maps. The Lewis Estate regrettably passed on the project.
Karen Wynn Fonstad passed away, far too young, in 2005 due to cancer. It was always a supreme regret of mine that she never got a chance to work on maps for more recent fantasy series such as The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire or The Malazan Book of the Fallen. My own Atlas of Ice and Fire website project was directly inspired by her work.
Mrs. Fonstad's son Mark, now an associate professor of geography at the University of Oregon, has spent recent weeks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Robinson Map Library, digitising the hundreds of maps from his mother's collection for legacy purposes. The work is incomplete and it will take several trips to complete the project. Once it's done, Mark will be looking for an academic institution to house both the physical and digital maps for future generations to enjoy. It looks like the never-before-seen maps from The Atlas of Narnia proposal will be included.
Splendid stuff, and it would be amazing if the digital collection was available somewhere for everyone to enjoy.
I remain active on the existing platforms for the time being, but with a huge number of my contacts setting up shop over on BlueSky, it seemed logical to set up an account there as well.
