The 1917 iteration builds upon this conceit, but vastly expanded into a six-foot panorama named An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland: Newly Discovered and Set Forth. It is this version which became Sleigh’s most enduring work. Unfurling nearly two metres in length, the panorama presents Fairyland as a vast, teeming realm populated with figures and places from mythology, medieval romance, Shakespeare, folklore, and children’s literature. The border, heavily annotated, serves as a guide to scenes including Asgard and the Norse Heroes, Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Mabinogion, Morte d’Arthur, Mother Goose, and more modern writers such as William Morris, George MacDonald, and J. M. Barrie.

Ex Carta

Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Map of Faerie-Land presents a panoramic chart uniting the mythic realms of folklore and literature. Emerging from the aesthetic tradition of Victorian neo-medievalism, to gather the realms of myth and story into a single imagined geography.

Bernard Sleigh (1872–1954) grew up in Birmingham, an industrial heartland of England, and was ‘indelibly inspired after seeing Peter Pan performed on stage’. He was also profoundly influenced by William Morris’s aesthetic vision and left school at the age of fourteen to take an apprenticeship as a wood engraver. This led to work on projects including Arthur Gaskin’s (1862–1928) edition of 

Stories & Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

 (1893), as well as work for such popular periodicals of the age as 

, Sleigh’s iconic Fairyland panorama might seem an unlikely creation in 1917, its shimmering Arts and Crafts fantasy emerging at the height of the Great War. Yet such engagement with the supernatural proliferated during this period of existential crisis. In the same year, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) publicly endorsed the authenticity of the ‘Cottingley fairies’ photographs, while Arthur Machen’s (1863–1947) story ‘The Bowmen’ contributed to the emergence of the ‘Angels of Mons’ legend, which imagined supernatural assistance being granted to British troops. Like Conan Doyle – whose claims on the subject he supported – Sleigh’s interest in fairy lore was not solely artistic. In the 1890s he was treated for an inner-ear abscess by trepanning – a hole being drilled in his skull. This resulted in Sleigh experiencing ‘sudden, overpowering, colour visions’ and what seemed to be encounters with other realms of existence, which he explained in psychic terms. Sleigh’s belief in other worlds was literal, despite being visually expressed by him using the traditional cultural framework of the fairy tale.

 was issued with a sixteen-page explanatory booklet, 

, which offered readers a key to the multitude of literary, folkloric, and mythical references depicted. The list includes several personages, items, and locations present elsewhere in this collection: Asgard, the Holy Grail, Peter Pan, and Never Never Land.

The 1917 iteration builds upon this conceit, but vastly expanded into a six-foot panorama named 

An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland: Newly Discovered and Set Forth

. It is this version which became Sleigh’s most enduring work. Unfurling nearly two metres in length, the panorama presents Fairyland as a vast, teeming realm populated with figures and places from mythology, medieval romance, Shakespeare, folklore, and children’s literature. The border, heavily annotated, serves as a guide to scenes including Asgard and the Norse Heroes, 

, Mother Goose, and more modern writers such as William Morris, George MacDonald, and J. M. Barrie.

This colour-printed pictorial map is presented on three sheets and accompanied by a 16-page booklet containing the key to the map.

A ‘mobile mural’ as much as a map, Sleigh’s Fairyland conjures a megalopolis of wonder: castles, enchanted woods, and caverns all flow seamlessly into one another in a bird’s-eye vista. The collaboration of ‘W. H. D.’ on the lettering and captions further grounds the work in the decorative ethos of the Birmingham Arts and Crafts movement. It has been suggested that Sleigh’s collation of a range of folkloric and literary sources in the map is an early example of ‘maps born from fandom culture, retrospective plottings of journeys undertaken first in the imagination.

Panoramic Map of Faerie-Land