The Island of Lost Maps : A True Story of Cartographic Crime

London England: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001. hardback. Very slight foxing to edge. In December 1995 Gilbert Bland was chased from the Peabody Library of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, clutching four 232 -year-old maps. He turned out to be one of the greatest map thieves in history. The author has spent four years tracing Bland's journey from middle-class anonymity to dark criminality, attempting to understand what drove Bland to steal some of the rarest cartographic treasures in the world. Gilbert Bland mutilated the beautifully crafted world of 'world describers' - work which took years of painstaking drafting and printing - simply with a razor blade and the sleight of his hand as he tried to sate his desire for the dark joys of appropriation. When eventually caught the only reason he could give for his spree was: 'I just wanted them'. The author returns to the libraries whose collections were so depleted by Bland's thieving to try to fill the gaps in this enigmatic man's life - the author as the explorer making sense of a terra incognita. In this book Harvey with great panache and wit conveys an intriguing subculture of map junkies whose cartomania is an obsession, both surreal and sublime, who see their maps as 'power-imbued fetishes'. It is a sparkling story of artisans, villainy and riveting adventures into the unknown. Illustrations. 405 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.). 2nd Impression. Cloth. Near Fine/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Harback.