1988 Ayriss Pictorial Literary Map of Paris, France

This is a 1988 Linda Ayriss pictorial literary map of Paris celebrating the City of Light and its contribution to world literature. Nearly 150 locations throughout Paris with connections to the lives of French and expatriate authors are numerically identified. Parisian monuments are illustrated pictorially, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Arc de Triomphe. Major streets are illustrated, and city parks are highlighted, such as the Jardin des Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Portraits of French literary giants appear to the left and right of the map, with Simone de Beauvoir, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Proust, and Colette among them. An illustration of the café Aux Deux Magots (a play on Les Deux Magots, a popular hangout for literary and intellectual elite in Paris beginning in the 1920s) dominates the bottom third of the sheet. The index of French authors occupies the café's awning and spills into the bottom left corner. An index of expatriates occupies the bottom right corner.

A Wonderful Series of Literary Maps

Aaron Blake Publishers published a series of literary maps in the mid to late 1980s. Some focused on specific cities (such as New York, Paris, and Los Angeles), some on specific authors (Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, Jane Austen), and others on geographic regions (the American South, Latin America). Each is visually striking and a great addition to any bibliophile's collection.

Publication History and Census

This map was created by Linda Ayriss and published by Aaron Blake Publishers in 1988. We note nine examples cataloged in OCLC: Cornell University, the Library of Congress, Grand Valley State University, the University of Iowa, Memorial University, the University of Texas, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of California Santa Barbara, and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.