Call for Papers: Maps and Mapping in Children’s Literature…

Literature for children and young adults is a rich source of material for the study of literary maps, one that has been largely overlooked, despite the growth in academic interest in this area of study.

Not so relevant to Lovecraft, but this call might be interesting to those researching similar genre authors, especially those in the sword-and-sorcery genre where the addition of fan-made maps have enhanced the fiction’s appeal to later generations of young teens.

There is the surveyor mapping in “The Colour Out of Space”, and one passing moment when Lovecraft follows a rough local map… “I was steering my course by the map the grocery boy had prepared” in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. This latter probably reflects his own practice during his numerous antiquarian visits to strange towns. There are also carved wall maps in At The Mountains of Madness which are found, copied and followed. But Lovecraft’s fiction is probably more interesting for the implied idea that certain spaces could not be found, or had not yet been placed, on maps.