Talking Maps, opening today at the Bodleian Libraries, is a major new map exhibition featuring maps from the Bodleian’s collections.

Highlights on show include the Gough Map, the earliest surviving map showing Great Britain in a recognizable form, the Selden Map, a late Ming map of the South China Sea, and fictional maps by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Map treasures from the Libraries’ collection will be shown alongside specially commissioned 3D installations and artworks, and exciting works on loan from artists and other institutions.

The exhibition is co-curated by Jerry Brotton, who among other things wrote A History of the World in Twelve Maps (my review) and Bodleian map librarian Nick Millea. They’ve co-authored a companion book to the exhibition, also out today, and also called Talking Maps (Bodleian).

The Bodleian is also publishing a number of other map books to coincide with the exhibition, including Mark Ashworth’s Why North is Up: Map Conventions and Where They Came From (Bodleian) and Brotton and Millea’s Fifty Maps and the Stories They Tell (Bodleian).

(See the Map Books of 2019 page for more Bodleian titles.)

Talking Maps opens today and runs until 8 March 2020. Free admission. More information from the Bodleian and Queen Mary University of London (where Brotton teaches).

Maps from the Bodleian Library were previously featured in Debbie Hall’s Treasures from the Map Room (Bodleian, 2016), reviewed here.