For reasons too complicated to enumerate here and now, all the best books (history, fiction, travelogue, whatever) begin with a map.
How exciting, then, to open the abridged edition (D. M. Low, New York, 1960) of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) and find this:
The bad news for today’s reading, however, is that the inscription by an unknown/illegible reader in the top left-hand corner reads:
I have tried a number of times to read this but even abridged it is just too verbose. XX, 2nd Jan, 76
Eeeeep! How’s that for a caveat? Thankfully, my training in convoluted, latinate prose has been thoroughgoing.
On a more pleasant note, literary cartophiliacs might like this visual interpretation of ‘Tintern Abbey’.
check out radicalcartography: http://www.radicalcartography.net/?subways
I love those subway maps! -m.