Abstract
The connected subject of maps and mapping discussed in this chapter are viewed through the lens of two types of geographic imagination, which use what David Matless describes as ‘outlook geography’ (leading to belonging and citizenship) and Mary Louise Pratt describes as the ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey’ scene (resulting in a ‘fantasy of dominance’).1 Here the terms ‘regional geographic imagination’ and ‘imperial geographic imagination’ are used to distinguish between the two. Both featured prominently in children’s books and as a result we see children’s literature overtly exploring the major issues and complexities that shaped British attitudes towards exploration and geography in the early twentieth century.
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Notes
David Matless, ‘Regional Surveys and Local Knowledges: The Geographical Imagination in Britain, 1918–39’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 17 (1992), 464–80 (468);
A Matless, ‘The Uses of Cartographic Literacy: Mapping, Survey and Citizenship in Twentieth Century Britain’, in Mappings, ed. by Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), pp. 193–212 (98) and
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 60.
From H. C. Barnard, Principles and Practice of Geography Teaching (1948), quoted in Matless, ‘Regional Surveys’, 477.
For a typical interwar example, see Leonard Outhwaite, Unrolling the Map: The Story of Exploration (London: Constable, 1935), p. 77.
Brian Harley ‘Victims of a Map: New England Cartography and the Native American’, quoted in Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (London and New York: The Guildford Press, 1992), p. 45.
Brian Harley, ‘Maps, Knowledge and Power’, in The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. by Paul Laxton, introduction by J. H. Andrews (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 51–83 (57);
Christian Jacob, ‘Towards a Cultural History of Cartography’, Imago Mundi, 48 (1996), 191–98 (193).
See for example Barbara Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital: The 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, It’s Sources and Meanings’, Imago Mundi, 50 (1998), 11–33.
There is a substantial body of criticism examining the persuasive nature of exploratory maps. For indicative readings, see J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. by Paul Laxton (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001);
J. S. Keates, Understanding Maps (1982; Harlow: Longman, 1996). For an example of the historical use of maps for persuasive purposes, see Barbara Mundy ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital’, pp. 11–33.
Clare Ranson, ‘Cartography and Children’s Literature’, in Sustaining the Vision: 24th Annual Conference, International Association of School Librarianship, Selected Papers (Seattle: International Association of School Librarianship, 1996), pp. 164–66 (164).
Anthony Pavlik, ‘A Special Kind of Reading Game: Maps in Children’s Literature’, International Research in Children’s Literature, 3.1 (2010), 28–43 (28). There are signs that this is changing. See for example
Julia Pond, ‘The Rub between Fact and Fiction: Ideology in Lois Lenski’s Regional Maps’, Children’s Literature in Education, 43 (2011), 44–55.
John Sheail, Rural Conservation in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 142.
M. E. Atkinson, August Adventure, illus. by Harold Jones (1936; London: The Bodley Head, 1946), pp. 165, 115, 236.
E. V. Lucas, The Slowcoach: A Story of Roadside Adventure, illus. by M. V. Wheelhouse (London: Wells Gardner Dartons, 1910), p. 2.
James Fairgrieve, Geography in School (London University Press, 1926), pp. 110, 113, 118.
There has been significant scholarship undertaken on this subject in the last 20 years. For a representative sample, see John Pickles, History of Spaces: Mapping Cartographic Reason, and the Over Coded World (London: Routledge, 2003);
Jeremy Black, Maps and Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1997).
H. J. Deverson and Ronald Lampitt, The Map That Came to Life (1948; Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 3.
Garry Hogg, Explorers on the Wall (1939; London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948), blurb on inside cover.
Garry Hogg, Explorers Awheel (1938; London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946), pp. 78–9.
Elinor Lyon, The House in Hiding (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1950; repr. Edinburgh: Cannongate, 1991), pp. 10, 125, 126.
Peter Hunt compares the reading material of Bevis and Mark with that of the Walkers, though I would argue that Robinson Crusoe is of equal importance for both groups of children. Peter Hunt, Approaching Arthur Ransome (London: Cape, 1992), p. 97.
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957; repr. London: Pimlico, 2000), p. 96. This belief is understandable given that Defoe used Alexander Selkirk’s account of his four-year stay on Juan Fernandez as material for his book.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719; London: The Folio Society, 1972; repr. 2008), pp. 58, 99.
Carter’s argument is that the names Cook chose for Australia were not either arbitrary or a means to court favour with those at home, but rather a record of Cook’s voyage which encapsulates both space and time. See Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).
Thomas de Quincey ‘Essay on Style, Rhetoric and Language’, in The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, vol. X, Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. by David Masson (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890), p. 143.
Raymond B. Craib, ‘Cartography and Power in the Conquest and Creation of New Spain’, Latin American Research Review, 35 (2000), 7–36 (10).
Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock, The Tar-Distant Oxus (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937; repr. Edinburgh: Fidra, 2008), pp. 216, 201, 221.
Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock, Oxus in Summer (London and Toronto: Jonathan Cape, 1939), p. 12.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902; London: Penguin, 1985), p. 33.
Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons (1930; London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), pp. 17, 20.
Peter Whitfield, New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration (London: British Library, 1998), p. 67.
M. B. Synge, A Book of Discovery: The History of the World’s Exploration from the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1939), p. 138.
Julian Lovelock, ‘A Sense of Endings: Arthur Ransome’s East Anglian Novels’ (PhD thesis, University of Buckingham, 2010), p. 40.
Ransome, Swallowdale (1931; London: Jonathan Cape, 1944), pp. 450, 449.
Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2004), p. 13.
Arthur Ransome, Secret Water (1939; London: Jonathan Cape, 1942), pp. 28, 30.
R. A. Skelton, Explorers’ Maps Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Discovery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 243.
Arthur Ransome, Great Northern? (1947; London: Jonathan Cape, 2009), p. 11.
Victor Watson, Reading Series Fiction: From Arthur Ransome to Gene Kemp (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 13, 15.
While this is not Andrew Thompson’s argument, he presents a useful summary of attitudes to empire after 1918. See Andrew S. Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (Essex: Pearson Education, 2000), pp. 161–77.
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© 2014 Hazel Sheeky Bird
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Bird, H.S. (2014). Mapping the Geographical Imagination. In: Class, Leisure and National Identity in British Children’s Literature, 1918–1950. Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137407436_5
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