The Phantom Atlas

A breakout bestseller in the UK, The Phantom Atlas is a beautifully produced volume, packed with maps, illustrations, and stories of places, people, and creatures that never existed – a treat for fans of maps, history, and exploration.

The Phantom Atlas is a guide to the world not as it is, but as it was imagined to be. It's a world of ghost islands, invisible mountain ranges, mythical civilisations, ship-wrecking beasts, and other fictitious features introduced on maps and atlases through mistakes, misunderstanding, fantasies, and outright lies. This richly illustrated book collects and explores the colourful histories behind a striking range of real antique maps that are all in some way a little too good to be true. Author Edward Brooke-Hitching investigates the places where exploration and mythology meet, using gorgeous atlas images as springboards for tales of the deranged buccaneers, seafaring monks, heroes, swindlers, and other amazing stories behind cartography's greatest phantoms.