Whitfield, Peter. New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration. London: The British Library, 1998. Viii, 200p., maps, illus. ISBN 0-7123-4557-4, $31.

Peter Whitfield’s string of books on old maps, which includes maps of the world, the oceans, and the heavens, is now joined by a volume on maps in explorations. Like the others in the series, the British Library is the publisher and the source of most of the illustrations. New Found Lands naturally invites comparison to the only earlier monograph on the subject, R. A. Skelton’s Explorers’ Maps: Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Exploration. The most striking difference is the quality of the illustrations. Whitfield has about 136 illustrations of old maps, most of them reproduced in color and most of them quite clear. Skelton illustrated more maps (about 195) but was limited to black and white half-tones. In the original 1958 edition, these were fair to middling; in the 1970 reprint they were uniformly wretched. In his text, Skelton strove to keep maps in the forefront of the story and his accounts of expeditions are more likely to discuss the maps themselves and to quote accounts of contemporary map use. Whitfield’s text is more a concise history of exploration, illustrated with maps. Unfortunately, Whitfield missed an opportunity to integrate his maps (and in many cases, these are the same maps chosen by Skelton) with his text: no reference is ever made to a map reproduction in the text! That is to say, a map may be mentioned, but there is no indication that it is reproduced five pages earlier or six pages ahead. The index is also very rudimentary, omitting many names of people and places and failing to distinguish between references to text and references to maps. New Found Lands is a useful introduction to the field and will take its place in the honorable roll of map “picture books”; it’s too bad, though, that the care taken with the illustrations was not matched by firmer editorial control.

Robert W. Karrow, Jr.
The Newberry Library