1932 Wylie and Van Leer Pictorial Map of the United States and American Literature

This is a 1932 Ethel Earle Wylie and Ella Wall Van Leer pictorial map of the United States celebrating American literature. Ethel and Ella give pride of place to their fellow female authors, whose portraits take pride of place along the top of the map. The work humorously contextualizes American literature in terms of American History, Westward Expansion, and Geographic Determinism.

A Closer Look

Well over one hundred authors are identified from coast to coast, each named near their hometown. Lists for New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are included off the Atlantic coast and an inset of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island occupies the top right. The largest concentration west of the Mississippi appears in San Francisco and its environs. Portraits of particularly famous authors adorn the map, with Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, and James Fenimore Cooper among them. Important natural sites are illustrated as well, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park. Historical events, such as Charles Lindbergh's departure on his transatlantic flight, are referenced. Portraits of nineteen female American authors create the top border and include Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, and Louisa May Alcott. Portraits of male authors, among whom are Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a young Robert Frost, occupy the bottom border.

20th Century Pictorial Cartography

Pictorial qualities have been common in cartography from at least from the 16th century when publishers like Braun and Hogenberg incorporated view-like qualities and other pictorial elements into their famous city plans. Braun and Hogenberg, and similar cartographers, issued their town books to express, not necessarily the geography of their subjects, but rather the 'essence' of the town/city. As mathematics and surveying principles became more advanced, travel increased, and the ability to translate 2 dimensional cartographic perspectives into an understanding of the actual world became commonplace, maps themselves transformed. This trend is a recognizable progression that evolved cartographic conventions from the 17th to the 19th centuries. By the late 19th century most maps had become geographical tools that illustrated the region cartographically but failed in the original raison d'être as expressed by Braun and Hogenberg, to illustrate a place's 'essence'. So, where a city map of 19th century Paris might provide a completely navigable presentation of the city, one could glean almost nothing of Paris' character from it. In the late 18th century, the first modern 'pictorial' style maps developed. These maps, like Tomas Lopez's 1788 map of Seville, attempted to provide both cartographic accuracy and pictorial elements that might convey the character of the city. In that case, Lopez incorporated pictorial vignettes to illustrate important buildings and monuments. This style became increasingly common throughout the 19th century and early 20th centuries, particularly for centers of commerce like London, Paris, and Rome, where they are often mass produced and referred to as 'monumental' maps. The style further evolved in the early to mid-20th century, when revolutionary cartographers and illustrators like MacDonald Gill, Jo Mora, Frank Dorn, Ernest Dudley Chase, and many others, combined vignette style illustrations, modern printing techniques, inspiration from Japanese printmaking and manga, and from clever satirical cartographers/artists like Fred Rose, to produce maps that once again focused on revealing the essence a place, usually, but not always, at the sacrifice of cartographic precision.

Publication History and Census

This map was compiled by Ethel Earle Wylie, illustrated by Ella Wall Van Leer and published by Rand McNally and Company in 1932. We note five examples cataloged in OCLC which are part of the collections at the Library of Congress, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Chicago, the Illinois State Library, and The British Library. Examples are also part of the David Rumsey Map Collection and the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Rarely seen on the private market.