Dimensions
147 x 196 x 37mm
A True Story Of Cartographic Crime
In December 1995 Gilbert Bland was chased from the rare book room of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, clutching a 232-year-old map. He turned out to be one of the greatest map thieves in history. Miles Harvey has spent four years tracing Bland's journey from middle-class anonymity to dark criminality, attempting to understand what drove Bland to steal some of the rarest cartographic treasures in the world.
Map-making is an ancient art which can be traced back to the Stone Ages; some scholars believe it led to the invention of writing. And since men have drawn maps, others have stolen them. During the age of discovery, map theft literally changed the face of the earth. Columbus discovered America thanks to charts purloined by his brother from the Portuguese; Ferdinand Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe - using classified Portuguese maps; Francis Drake shattered Spain's hold of the Americas and made smooth passage to the East Indies with captured Spanish maps.
Gilbert Bland mutilated the beautifully crafted work of "world describers" - work which took years of painstaking drafting and printing - simply with a razor blade and the sleight of his hand. Harvey returns to the libraries whose collections were so depleted by Bland's thieving, to try to fill the gaps in this enigmatic man's life. In 'The Island Of The Lost Maps' Harvey with great panache and humour conveys an intriguing subculture of map junkies whose cartomania is an obsession both surreal and sublime.
