A wonderful atlas -- my favorite are her trail maps where she depicts a character's daily journey in the book.
The article (almost) footnotes her other work which was equally impressive:
* She also created atlases for the worlds of fantasy authors Anne McCaffrey, creator of the “Dragonriders of Pern” series, and Stephen R. Donaldson, who wrote “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” series.
I love fantasy in general, and have read a ton of it. other than tolkien, I have never read a novel with that strong a sense of geography in a constructed world - specifically, that there is an entire rich land out there, and not just a graph of interesting places with the focus shifting from one point to another. when the hobbits have to go from the shire to rivendell, or aragorn has to take the paths of the dead to reach his destination in time, tolkien really manages to convey the experience of a difficult journey that takes a significant amount of time even when nothing plot-significant is happening along the way.
One of my biggest takeaways from the first time I saw her work was that Beleriand was actually situated to the west of Middle Earth prior to sinking. I had seen far too many erroneous maps placing it north of Middle Earth (https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uplo...)
The Journeys of Frodo is also worth a look if you like this kind of thing. The author isn’t a professional cartographer and it’s more focused on LOTR locations than general world building. Anyway, I was completely captivated by it as a child when I stumbled across it in my high school’s library.
For rich, authentic old-style maps you want to make at home on the PC (or iPad) is there any better resource than K. M. Alexander's?
Do I love maps because of the fantasy books I read as a kid? Did I love (and still love) the fantasy books because I love maps? I may never know.
I've heard of the Atlas of Middle Earth but never knew this amazing story behind it. Thanks for posting it, bookofjoe!
Also, really cool to know she did D&D maps too. Maps are just rad
Karen also did the Atlas of Krynn, the world of the Dragonlance Saga. I still have my copy. Wonderful illustrations and maps.
Every time I read a chapter from LOTR and then hike with my dog, I imagine myself being Frodo and my dog being Samwise, and I find myself talking to the dog, sometimes yelling at him - hey don't go there, there might be Orcs there or maybe Dark Riders were here etc. Of course my dog doesn't care, but I love this silly monologue with him.
Just ordered this book and can't wait to start reading LOTR again!
What a wonderful thing to do.
Map making is such an amazing skill.
I still have my copy, less the paper book cover. In storage at the moment, but I’m pretty sure it was first edition.
What a wonderful article (public radio!) and what wonderful work.
Heartening to see amidst a time of attacks on higher education.
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Atlas of Middle-earth is a truly monumental feat.
I think the article writer misses how much of it is really about The Silmarillion, rather than about Lord of the Rings. Tolkien put a lot of work into First Age geography, an entire (interminable, excruciating) chapter of The Silmarillion. Very little of it would be familiar to viewers of the films, and a lot of it opaque even to readers just of LotR.