The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps

By Edward Brooke-Hitching

A STUNNINGLY ILLUSTRATED BOOK REVEALING THE GREATEST MYTHS, LIES AND BLUNDERS ON MAPS
'Highly recommended' - Andrew Marr
'A spectacular, enjoyable and eye-opening read' - Jonathan Ross

The Phantom Atlas is an atlas of the world not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be. These marvellous and mysterious phantoms - non-existent islands, invented mountain ranges, mythical civilisations and other fictitious geography - were all at various times presented as facts on maps and atlases. This book is a collection of striking antique maps that display the most erroneous cartography, with each illustration accompanied by the story behind it.

Exploration, map-making and mythology are all brought together to create a colourful tapestry of monsters, heroes and volcanoes; swindlers, mirages and murderers. Sometimes the stories are almost impossible to believe, and remarkably, some of the errors were still on display in maps published in the 21st century. Throughout much of the 19th century more than 40 different mapmakers included the Mountains of Kong, a huge range of peaks stretching across the entire continent of Africa, in their maps - but it was only in 1889 when Louis Gustave Binger revealed the whole thing to be a fake. For centuries, explorers who headed to Patagonia returned with tales of the giants they had met who lived there, some nine feet tall. Then there was Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish explorer who returned to London to sell shares in a land he had discovered in South America. He had been appointed the Cazique of Poyais, and bestowed with many honours by the local king of this unspoiled paradise. Now he was offering others the chance to join him and make their fortune there, too - once they had paid him a bargain fee for their passage... 

The Phantom Atlas is a beautifully produced volume, packed with stunning maps and drawingsof places and people that never existed. The remarkable stories behind them all are brilliantly told by Edward Brooke-Hitching in a book that will appeal to cartophiles everywhere. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Nov 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781471159473

Edward Brooke-Hitching

Edward Brooke-Hitching is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling books The Phantom Atlas (2016), The Golden Atlas (2018), The Sky Atlas (2019), The Madman's Library (2020) and The Devil's Atlas (2021), all of which have been translated into numerous languages; he is also the author of Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports (2015). He is a writer for the BBC series QI. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an incurable cartophile, he lives surrounded by dusty heaps of old maps and books in Berkshire. 

Reviews for The Phantom Atlas

[muumuumousie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is amazing! Edward Brooke-Hitching has written an atlas of cartography’s mistakes, but you don’t need to have any background knowledge of history or map-making in order to appreciate this wonderful collection. The author does a fantastic job of explaining these histories to a lay audience, and he is very succinct, devoting only a few pages to each blunder. The stories are interesting, covering a broad range of topics: islands that probably existed once but have been swallowed by the ocean, mountains that never were, rival explorers whose “discoveries” outdid each other, races of giants, mythical sea creatures, lost continents, and so much more. I like the author’s tone very much; he does a good job of presenting the facts objectively, but the style is still very readable and, at times, funny. I also like that the content is laid out alphabetically, rather than by type of mistake; this keeps the content varied. The images are beautiful, with clear reproductions of very old maps. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable!

[autolykos-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful full color book for all those who love maps, and who love their insight into the history of the period they were created in. Map-heads will love this as a gift. My husband has been known to zone out in front of a map for hours at a time. He loves this book as it is great read.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My many thanks to the publisher and to the powers that be at LibraryThing for my copy. In the introduction to this book, the author says that"This is an atlas of the world -- not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be. The countries, islands, cities, mountains, rivers, continents and races collected in this book are all entirely fictitious; and yet each was for a time -- sometimes for centuries -- real. How? Because they existed on maps." This book is not only filled with photos of "the greatest cartographic phantoms ever to haunt the maps of history," but also comes with a fair bit of the history of these "phantoms" that reveals quite a lot about their respective provenances and most especially the influence that mapping them would come to have on future adventurers and explorers. It goes on to explore why these nonexistent places began to be mapped in the first place, incorporating elements of mythology, religion, and superstition, but also physical phenomena such as the Fata Morgana. Then there are a few stories of the fraudsters who felt no compunction about inventing islands or countries either for fame or for cash, as in the example of "Sir" Gregor MacGregor, who set up a scheme involving land ownership in the Territory of Poyais, which appeared on an 1822 map of central America's Mosquitia region. The Phantom Atlas is so very nicely done and I'm not simply referring to its beautiful, giftworthy quality. It is perfect for people who appreciate the artistic quality of the maps that the author's used here and even more so for people like me who enjoy the history behind them. Some of these accounts are so strange that they could seriously be the basis of pulp fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction or even horror stories. The dustjacket blurb refers to this book a "brilliant collection," and I couldn't agree more.

[rickla-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Receiving this book, I found such a rich collection of "phantom" maps such that, even for a cartophile like me, I was surprised and delighted to make my way through them. Because the table of contents is in alphabetical order, the maps roam around the globe at will. So it is up to the reader to decide how to attack this compact but dense volume. Every continent and corner of the world is represented here. The history absorbs you and draws you in, leading to ideas of further exploration of the many areas and topics included. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves to pore over maps, charts, and drawings. Exploration of the world was never more fun.

[janerawoof · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely stunning atlas of "places that never were." Gorgeous coffee table book of fictitious places accompanied by delightful cartographic oddities and pictures of bizarre humanoids attested to by such people as Pliny [who I think accepted everyone's description of something at face value.] These fictitious places can be traced to several factors: myth, legend, or religion; someone's honest mistake; some places dreamed up by someone wanting fame and fortune from the "discovery". Although most of these places have proven to be imaginary upon investigation, even today with satellites, we still wonder about the existence of a few. I feel it best to dip into the text, not read straight through. I did like the feature of most of the maps; besides the complete map, there was an insert of the specific location with a line pointing to its place on the map. Highly recommended.

[gryphon8kl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a collection of some of the more interesting places (and, in a few cases, creatures) that were shown on maps despite never actually existing (or being very different from how they were drawn, in the cases of the islands of California and Korea). The reasons for these errors range from honest mistakes and wishful thinking to faulty theories all the way to outright criminality, but they combine to make quite a history of how things weren’t and how some of these persisted (occasionally into this century).Each entry has a history of the origins of the belief in the location, its subsequent history as it showed up on additional maps and records (sometimes drifting as evidence made it clear that it wasn’t where it had been thought), and the eventual debunking (or, in one case, the possibility that an island had existed but sank), along with the approximate longitude and latitude of the place, other names for it, and some maps of the place and related illustrations.All-in-all, this is probably worth it if the subject sounds interesting. I did reduce my rating due to a couple of problems, however. One is that a production error results in the entry for Buss Island being cut off in mid-sentence near the end. The other, which was probably unavoidable, is that significant parts of larger maps (those taking up two pages) get lost in the gutter, impossible to see if one is unwilling to break the spine (and maybe even if one is willing to; I can’t say since I wasn’t). Neither of these seriously detract from the book, though.

[murderbydeath · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Everybody who isn't me knows an atlas is a reference, not something to be read cover-to-cover. Me? I had to read it cover to cover, which made this gorgeous, well-written, informative book feel more like a chore than it should have. This is an atlas of all the places on the maps throughout history that never existed. Atlantis will be the first example that comes to many minds, but there are so many more. You wouldn't think maps would be enduring evidence of the human ability to spin a yarn but our ability to make stuff up is timeless. Each entry gets at least a spread and the old maps included (in color where applicable) are gorgeous; almost worth the price of the book on their own. If you love maps, or geography, this book is beautiful and worth a look; even though I'm glad to finally finish it, it's something I'll treasure and look at again and again.