The Life and Work of Karen Wynn Fonstad
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Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps were a huge part of my youthful enjoyment of not only Lord of the Rings but also the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I had not thought much about her in recent years but there’s a nice story about her son’s efforts to chronicle her work in Wisconsin:
Karen’s impact on the world of fantasy map-making was huge. We realize this as UW-Madison geography student Reid Osborn peeks into the map library, and it sinks in what he’s looking at.
It turns out he is a huge Fonstad fan and is starstruck by the massive collection he has stumbled across.
“Is this happening?” Osborn said.
He’s not alone. Mark shared a quote from the most important audience of all — Christopher Tolkien, son of the author and manager of the works until his death in 2020.
“The Atlas of Middle-earth is very remarkable. The very publication of such a book in such elegant form, and the highly professional skill and care that Mrs. Fonstad has brought to its making is sufficiently wonderful,” Christopher wrote.
And Karen had fans, from readers of Tolkien to Dungeons & Dragons players, who used her work.
“I think she was quite taken aback by the public interest in her and her work at the time,” Mark said. “Because when she was working on these projects, mostly in the 1980s, she said, ‘I could have been on a desert island.’ It was just her and her maps and her light table and the drafting pens, and that was basically it…”
Karen Wynn Fonstad died of breast cancer in 2005. As Todd recalls, the last few months of her life were the first time he saw her slow down.
Mark and Todd agree the legacy of her work lives on.
“I think she would be utterly surprised, to say the least, to see how this has ballooned,” Todd said. “You know, she never did this for money or for fame. It was her passion.”
They’re looking to preserve that legacy with their current project to digitize her work and find a permanent home in an archive for the maps spread over the map library during our visit.
And evidently her son also works as a geographer at the University of Oregon!