Name: Ursula K. Le Guin's Map of Earthsea
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Ex Carta

Typed post card signed by Ursula Le Guin and the author Jack Chalker laid in. 

Revealed through his adventures are the islands of the vast archipelago of Earthsea itself: from temperate and bucolic homelands such as Ged’s own island of Gont, to wilder, uncharted territories where dragons squat in decaying ruins and necromancers undertake sinister rituals in isolated towers. Surrounding all is a vast and illimitable ocean. In 2012 Le Guin recalled that before she began writing the novel she ‘got a big piece of poster board and drew the map’, based on her belief that ‘where is as important in the realms of pure imagination as it is here in mundanity’.

The map of Earthsea in the frontispiece of the first edition of A Wizard of Earthsea was drawn by Ruth Robbins (dates unknown). It is flanked by two columns of her evocative and stylised illustrations depicting key incidents from the novel: Ged controlling the winds to steer his ship; Ged travelling with his familiar, the otak; the imposing Isolate Tower. The map itself shows the entirety of the Earthsea archipelago, which – according to the scale – extends about 1500 miles in each direction, with the larger island of Havnor at the centre. The reader begins this first novel already equipped with a detailed understanding of the archipelago’s geography and the names of its constituent islands. The system of magic used by Ged is based on the knowledge of the true name of everything in creation, and here we are given a similar power over the world of Earthsea.

The map of the archipelago is especially compelling due to its demonstration of what John Clute has termed the ‘water margin’. Using the title of the fourteenth-century Chinese classic usually translated into English as The Water Margin, Clute has observed that maps of secondary worlds are often bordered by regions unmapped and nebulous. This connotes the idea that the imaginary world extends somehow into further ineffable regions, the water margin working as a potential gateway to further story-worlds or the end of knowledge itself. Le Guin’s archipelago is at once scattered by the ocean and unified by it, the watery edges of the map containing its disparate islands, while offering the implication of further thresholds of discovery.

First published in 1968, A Wizard of Earthsea follows the young mage Ged as he learns to master his powers and confront the shadow he has unleashed. Ursula K. Le Guin’s spare, mythic prose and Ruth Robbins’s frontispiece map together evoke a vividly realised archipelago steeped in wonder, danger, and ancient lore.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) has been described as ‘one of the two or three most important US science fiction authors of the second half of the 20th century,’ and her 

 novels as ‘one of the most deeply influential of all 20th-century fantasy texts’. 

, the first in what became a six-book series, was published in 1968 by the small US press, Parnassus.

It tells the story of Ged, whose magical talents are identified early in life and result in his being sent to a school of wizardry for specialist training. There, he must learn the discipline required to wield his powers responsibly.

There has occasionally been speculation about the novel’s possible influence on J. K. Rowling’s creation of 

 While they share a superficially similar setup, 

 is written with a mythopoeic sweep that places it firmly in the tradition of fable and romance, rather than accessible young-adult fiction; it is possessed of an understated melancholy far starker and more primal than the hectic immediacy of the 

. Ged is at times a singularly unsympathetic protagonist: he brings misfortune upon himself and others through his arrogance and impulsiveness. However, the novels function as a Bildungsroman (a narrative concerning a young person’s formative years and their transition to adulthood), and – while often self-inflicted – it is through his trials and tribulations that Ged grows into one of the realm’s most revered and powerful magicians.

Map of Earthsea

Cover for A Wizard of Earthsea, illustrated by Ruth Bobbins

Map of Earthsea covering The Ninety Isles

Map of Earthsea focusing on The East Reach

Revealed through his adventures are the islands of the vast archipelago of Earthsea itself: from temperate and bucolic homelands such as Ged’s own island of Gont, to wilder, uncharted territories where dragons squat in decaying ruins and necromancers undertake sinister rituals in isolated towers. Surrounding all is a vast and illimitable ocean.

In 2012 Le Guin recalled that before she began writing the novel she ‘got a big piece of poster board and drew the map’, based on her belief that ‘where is as important in the realms of pure imagination as it is here in mundanity’.

The map of Earthsea in the frontispiece of the first edition of 

 was drawn by Ruth Robbins. It is flanked by two columns of her evocative and stylised illustrations depicting key incidents from the novel: Ged controlling the winds to steer his ship; Ged travelling with his familiar, the otak; the imposing Isolate Tower. The map itself shows the entirety of the Earthsea archipelago, which – according to the scale – extends about 1500 miles in each direction, with the larger island of Havnor at the centre.

The reader begins this first novel already equipped with a detailed understanding of the archipelago’s geography and the names of its constituent islands. The system of magic used by Ged is based on the knowledge of the true name of everything in creation, and here we are given a similar power over the world of Earthsea.

The map of the archipelago is especially compelling due to its demonstration of what John Clute has termed the ‘water margin’. Using the title of the fourteenth-century Chinese classic usually translated into English as The Water Margin, Clute has observed that maps of secondary worlds are often bordered by regions unmapped and nebulous. This connotes the idea that the imaginary world extends somehow into further ineffable regions, the water margin working as a potential gateway to further story-worlds or the end of knowledge itself. Le Guin’s archipelago is at once scattered by the ocean and unified by it, the watery edges of the map containing its disparate islands, while offering the implication of further thresholds of discovery.