The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic - Hardcover

Manguel, Alberto; Guadalupi, Gianni

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151005419 ISBN 13: 9780151005413

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

An expanded edition of a classic resource of fantastic literature serves as a guide to the imaginative realms, including Atlantis, Tolkien's Middle Earth, and Oz, touring more than 1,200 lands, including, in this volume, such places as Rushdie's Sea of Stories. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of dozens of books including A History of Reading, for which he was recently awarded France's prestigious Prix Medicis. An editor, translator, and essayist, he began his career with the first edition of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places in 1980, with co-author Gianni Guadalupi, a translator, editor, and passionate book collector.

Reviews

Since the publication of the first Dictionary in 1980, Manguel (A History of Reading) and Guadalupi, a translator and editor, have accepted suggestions from readers and continued their own research. The result is this updated version--a book that includes imaginary terrains from ancient Greece to Harry Potter's Hogwarts. The authors have set a few limitations for inclusion: "no heavens or hells, no places in the future, none outside the planet Earth, no pseudonymous places such as Wessex or Manawaka." Even with those seemingly extensive restrictions, however, the dictionary runs over 700 pages. Each place is described in detail as if it physically existed outside the reader's imagination. Entries are cross-referenced and See references are provided, as well as illustrations and maps that are difficult to locate elsewhere. A valuable reference source to accompany fiction collections, this new edition is recommended for all school, public, and academic libraries.
-Katherine K. Koenig, Ellis Sch., Pittsburgh
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When the first edition of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places debuted in 1980 (followed by an expanded paperback edition in 1987), it aimed to offer a balance between the practical and the fantastic by using the form of "a nineteenth-century gazetteer." The sense of reality was heightened by illustrations and maps. Now in this newly updated and expanded volume, the same editors have created a "travel" guide to more than 1,200 realms from books and films, with new entries for Hogwarts and Jurassic Park, among other places.

Entries are arranged alphabetically and vary in length from a paragraph or two to several pages for such destinations as Islandia, Middle-Earth, and Utopia. They offer description, history, and travel tips. Source notes at the conclusion of each entry provide author, work, and date of publication. Authors range from fiction writers to essayists, playwrights, film directors, and composers. The index lists places alphabetically under author and cross-references titles to authors. In the index, titles are listed in the original language followed by an English translation in brackets, with the English translation also listed separately.

This guide to "places that never were" delights through the different examples of the fantastic and imaginary, some familiar, such as Narnia and Oz, and others more obscure, such as Carl Sandburg's Palace of Paper Sacks, from Rootabaga Stories, and Margaret Atwood's Realm of the Jaguar Throne, from Murder in the Dark. Besides being fun to browse, the book provides serious support for literature collections. Libraries that have found the previous editions useful will want this update.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151005419
• ISBN 13: 9780151005413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 776