Published in 1914, by paying us your pennies – or the wonderground map of london town, as this cartographic icon became known – presents a bird’s eye view of the capital peopled with characters from every walk of life making whimsical quips or puns about road or place names:
men hurl hams in hurlingham
in earls court ‘the earl’s caught!’
a colourful serpent has taken up residence in the serpentine. Despite its chevrons and heraldic borders, it clearly presents a contemporary portrait of london with its motor cars and b-type buses and a state-of-the-art monoplane looping the loop in the skies above. Press reports of the time claimed that 'people spend so long looking at this map – they miss their trains yet go on smiling' (daily sketch, may 1914). Various retail editions were published in the following years, while map-makers across the world were inspired to create 'wonder' maps of their own cities including melbourne, mexico city and barcelona. Date: 1915.
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