Imaginary Maps Archives

The maps that we offer here all chart the whimsical & creative genius of the human imagination and our relentless desire to explore the boundaries and extremes of the world in which we live, whether our compass points to the outer physical world or, as mostly here, to the inner spiritual and emotional one.

Here we explore the deepest and darkest corners of life’s experiences, of philosophy, religion, morality, our innermost emotions & sensibilities, relationships, love, matrimony and much more. Some maps are allegorical, some satirical and propagandist, some moralising & didactic. Yet others are simply pure geo-fiction, hidden private inner worlds, the creative, amusingly idiosyncratic jeu d’esprits of particular individuals whose cartographic musings & imaginings have luckily been recorded for posterity.

Others offer a panoramic landscape of purest fantasy – visions of Fairyland and Make Believe – drawn by their authors from the richly woven literary tapestry of folktale, legend & traditional nursery rhyme, fantasy worlds in which their creators seem sometimes to have become almost prisoners themselves. Bernard Sleigh, the creator of the famous map of Fairyland described himself as a human Peter Pan trapped between this temporal World of Man and a childish one in a parallel timeless psychic dimension – the domain of fairies, sprites and dryads – whose existence he truly avowed.