The world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

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The world of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman is detailed by creator Alan Moore in an extensive appendix to the second volume of the comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The appendix contains an imaginary traveller's account of the alternate universe the League is set in called The New Traveller's Almanac. This Almanac provides 46 pages of background information--all of which is taken from pre-existing literary works or mythology, a large majority of which is difficult to read or at least appreciate without an esoteric knowledge of literature. It shows the plot of the comic to be just a small section of a world inhabited by what appears to be the entirety of fiction.

The Almanac is written in the style of a declassified document from MI5 taken from a government library. The travel reports, mostly compiled from log entries by Mina Murray, Prospero and Captain Nemo (and occasionally quote from them, including Prospero's log written entirely in iambic pentameter), scan over every part of the world in several chapters.

Buried in the exhausting prose are various hints at portions of the story not covered by the graphic novel portion of the volume, such as the adventures of earlier leagues, Murray's correspondence with Sherlock Holmes, Murray and Allen Quartermain's search for the fountain of youth known as the "Pool of Fire and Life" or "the Fire of Life," and their investigation of H.P. Lovecraft-style phenomena and parallel universes for the British government.

The narrator is at times intentionally ignorant, obfuscating literary references and plot points so that they serve as easter eggs. For example, the narrator refers to Murray's visit to "an elderly bee-keeper who resided near the seaside cove of Fulworth". Those familiar with "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" will recall that Sherlock Holmes retires to Fulworth to keep bees.

Contents

[edit] The British Isles

The first chapter covers Britain and Ireland, describing, in addition to sites related to British and Irish folklore such as faeries, leprechauns, giants, The Mabinogion, and Arthurian legend, sites from both British and Irish literature such as:

[edit] Britain

  • "The Blazing World", a feminist utopia inhabiting an archipelago connecting the north pole to Britain and Iceland, described in "Observations upon Experimental Philosophy" by Margaret Cavendish
  • "The Streaming Kingdom", from Jules Supervielle’s "L'Enfant de la Haute Mer" (1931), inhabited by the ghosts of drowned people.
  • St. Brendan’s Isle, from Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies
  • Victoria, the Puritan commune from "National Evils and Practical Remedies, with a Plan of a Model Town" by James Silk Buckingham
  • Avondale, the phalanstery from "The Child of the Phalanstery" by Grant Allen, that systematically murders crippled and deformed children at birth
  • Commutaria, the idyllic shire founded by Merlin, from Elspeth Ann Macey’s “Awayday” (1955)
  • Abaton, a mythical Scottish phantom town that can only be glimpsed, from the work of Sir Thomas Bulfinch
  • Baskerville Hall
  • Thomas Love Peacock's Crotchet Castle
  • Yalding Towers, from E. Nesbit's "The Enchanted Tower" (which contains dinosaur statures that magically come to life)
  • Ravenal's Tower, where the remains of Richard Ravenal from E. Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods reside
  • The White House, the residence of the Psammead from Five Children and It
  • The Wish House from Rudyard Kipling's "The Wish House" (1926)
  • Cold Comfort Farm from the eponymous Stella Gibbons novel.
  • the mythical Ysbaddaden Pencawr, a castle that gets further away the closer you get to it
  • Exham Priory, from Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" (in the book, the mansion is infested by demonic rats and leads down into an ancient cavern)
  • Llareggub from Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood
  • The floating island from The Floating Island by Richard Head (under the pseudonym "Frank Careless") (1673), inhabited by ninepins-playing Naiads
  • Camford, the setting of The Adventure of the Creeping Man, where Professor Presbury invents a serum for turning men into apes
  • A description of how the works of Lewis Carroll tie into the world: In 1861, Alice (referred to in the almanac as "Miss A.L.", a reference to Alice Liddell using the convention of withholding the names of children) disappears into a portal to a parallel universe (Wonderland) by the shores of River Thames, and washes up soaking wet several months later, after her disappearance created a media panic. Although she had been gone for months, only an afternoon had passed in Wonderland. She recounted how she'd fallen down a puzzling "hole" that she'd found in the riverbank, only to find herself in a disorienting realm where many laws of physics, even laws of logic, were entirely different from those of our world.
She gets sucked into the world again 10 years later while visiting Oxford, via a looking-glass, but returns with her body inverted so that features on her left side are now on her right side and vice-versa. She has situs inversus, but does not die from it. She dies from malnutrition, because her amino acids and proteins are now isomers. A being made of isomer proteins is 'incompatible' with Earth's biosphere, which exhibits a preferential handedness. An expedition to explore the original riverbank hole was then organized by a "Dr. Bellman," accompanied by a lawyer, a banker, a butcher, a shoemaker, a bonnet-maker, a billiard-maker, and a woman named "Miss Beever" (a reference to the cast of "The Hunting of the Snark"). They too disappeared, and reappeared again months later, except the baker (who vanishes in "The Hunting of the Snark"); their adventure log is nothing but nonsensical poetry (a reference to "Phantasmagoria" and other poems by Carroll, including "The Hunting of the Snark"). The banker suffers the same fate as Alice, as he is found with his clothes inverted in color (a reference to the line in the poem "While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white"). All of the survivors are institutionalized, and years later, Mina Murray visits the only living survivor, Dr. Bellman, who gives her a blank piece of paper that's supposedly a map to Snark Island (the same map which Bellman used to navigate the sea to Snark Island).
  • Winton Pond, from Graham Greene's "Under the Garden" (1963), which contains references to both Alice books, is subsequently mentioned in passing.
  • Nightmare Abbey, from Thomas Love Peacock's novel of the same name
  • Alderley Edge, as described in Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen"
  • The various locations in Bram Stoker's Lair of the White Worm
  • The world of the Vril, from a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. They are enigmatically connected to C.S. Lewis's Narnia. The word for "sin" and "evil" in their language is "Nania" [sic], (an invention of Moore, not Lytton) and the reader is directed to a (fictional) document referring to a British project to grow an apple tree. (Apple trees are a common motif in The Chronicles of Narnia)
  • The underground Coal City from Jules Verne's "The Black Indies"
  • The underground "Roman State" from "Land Under England"
  • Brigadoon
  • Airfowlness, the meeting-place of the crows from The Water Babies
  • Coradine, from W.H. Hudson's A Crystal Age, where Mina Murray moves to at the end of volume two. (Moore ignores the fact that A Crystal Age takes place in the future.)
  • The Glittering Plain, from William Morris' "The Story of the Glittering Plain", a valley that grants enterers immortality, but making them unable to leave the valley
  • The Isle of Ransom, from the same story

Also, many of the sites mentioned in Arthurian lore are mentioned in this chapter, with the events described as happened there in the legends treated as historical, rather than legendary events.

[edit] Ireland

[edit] Continental Europe

The second chapter covers continental Europe.

Islands off the coast of Iberia:

  • The former-kingdom of Philomela
  • The Capa Blanca Isles of "The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle", by Hugh Lofting
  • The island of Mayda from The Alhambra
  • Nut Island from Lucian of Samosata's "True History" (where the native fishermen make boats out of gigantic nut-shells)
  • Coromandel, from Edward Lear's "The Courtship of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò" (1877) Note: This not a reference to the real Coromandel, the south-eastern coastal region of India, but a reference to the fictional Coromandel from Lear's famous nonsense poem.
  • Lanternland, a mythical island mentioned in François Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
  • The island of the Lotus-Eaters
  • Ogygia, from Homer's Odyssey
  • The surreal island of "Her", from Alfred Jarry's "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician"
  • The Imaginary Isle from "La Relation de l'Isle imaginaire" (1659) by Anne Marie Louise de Montpensier
  • The island of the Cyclopses, from Homer's Odyssey
  • The Great Garabagne, Henri Michaux's "Voyage to Grand Garabagne" (1936) an island where the visitor's despairs come true
  • Aiolio, home of Aiolos Hippotade, the god of wind, in Homer's Odyssey
  • Monte de las Animas, a former-stronghold of the Knights Templar, mentioned by Gustavo Becquer
  • Anostus, from Claudius Aelianus' "Varia Historia", with two rivers called "Pleasure" and "Grief". Beside these two streams grow fruit, the fruit of the former causes a lifetime of joy, and the fruit of the latter causes a lifetime of sorrow.

[edit] Spain and Portugal

  • Max Frisch's Andorra
  • Montesino's Cave, in La Mancha, where Prospero befriended Don Quixote, containing the tomb of Durandarte, Spanish folk hero
  • Exopotomania, from Boris Vian's "L'Automne à Pékin" (1956)
  • Andrographia, from Nicolas-Edme Rétif's "Andrographe ou idées d'un honnête homme sur un projet de réglement proposé à toutes les nations de l'Europe pour opérer une réforme générale des moeurs, et par elle, le bonheur du genre humain avec des notes historiques et justificatives" (1782)
  • The wizard Atlante's demonic castle, from Orlando Furioso
  • The setting of Jorge Luis Borges' "La Muerte y la brújula" (1956)
  • Auspasia, the most talkative land in the world, from Georges Duhamel's "Lettres d'Auspasie"
  • Bengodi, from The Decameron, which has a mountain of parmesan cheese, and heliotropes that bestow invisibility (which, in the League world, Hawley Griffin used to create an invisibility syrum)
  • The libertine Trypheme, from Pierre Louys' "Les Aventures du roi Pausole" (1901)

[edit] Islands off the coast of France

  • Papafiguiera, from Béroalde de Verville's "Le Moyen de parvenir. Oeuvre contenant la raison de tout ce qui a esté, est, et sera, avec démonstrations certaines et nécessaires selon la rencontre des effets de vertu", (1610) inhabited by extremely obese people.
  • Ptyx, Laceland, Amorphous Island, Fragrant Island and Bran Isle, from Alfred Jarry's "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician"
  • Clerkship Island, Ruach the Windy Island, the Fortunate Islands, (including the Isle of Butterflies, inhabited by monstrous butterflies) Pastemolle the pie island, and Breadlessday Island, from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel
  • Leaveheavenalone, from the Kingsley's Water Babies
  • Cyril Island, a mobile volcano in Alfred Jarry's "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician", inhabited by Captain Kidd
  • Thermometer Island, from "Les bijoux indiscrets", by Denis Diderot, in which the inhabitants have enchanted genitalia

[edit] France

[edit] Belgium

[edit] Greece

[edit] Italy

[edit] Germany

[edit] Belgium

  • Harmonia, from Charles Fourier's Théorie des Quatre Mouvements and Georges Delbruck's Au pays de l'harmonie

[edit] The Netherlands

  • Vondervotteimittis, from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Devil in the Belfry"
  • the island Laiquihire, from Voyage Curieux d'un Philadelphe dans des Pays nouvellement Découverts

[edit] Scandinavia

[edit] Eastern Europe

[edit] The Americas

The third chapter covers the Americas

[edit] Off the coast of South America

[edit] In South America

[edit] Off the coast of North America

[edit] In North America

[edit] Africa and the Middle East

The fourth chapter covers Africa and the Middle East

[edit] Asia and the Australias

The fifth chapter covers Asia and the Australias

[edit] Polar Regions

The sixth chapter covers the Arctic and Antarctica

[edit] Islands and seas off the coast of Antarctica

  • Megapatagonia, archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean stretching south from Tierra del Fuego, similar to the Blazing World archipelago north of Britain, inhabited by animal men and an inverse of French society. The capital city is "Sirap." From La Découverte australe par un homme-volant by Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne
  • Pyrandia island, in the South Pacific Ocean southwest of the Megapatagonia islands, west of the Antarctic peninsula, home to fire men, from Supplément de l'Histoire véritable de Lucien by Jean Jacobé de Frémont d'Ablancourt
  • The Academic Sea, somewhere between McMurdo Sound and the Ross Sea, containing the city of Christianopolis on the island of Caphar Salama, from Reipublicae Christianapolitinae Descriptio (or Description of the Republic of Christianopolis) by Johannes Valentinus Andreae
  • The Leap Islands, in LoEG also be part of the Academic Sea, containing Aggregation Harbour on the Isle of Leaphigh, inhabited by enlightened monkey-men, from The Monikins by James Fennimore Cooper
  • Tsalal island, in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Enderby Land, from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Edgar Allan Poe

[edit] Antarctica

[edit] Northern Asia

  • Plutonia from Plutonia by Vladimir Obruchev
  • The Arctic entrance to Pluto, a subterranean land, from Voyage au centre de la terre (or Journey to the Centre of the Earth) by Jules Verne

[edit] Islands and other locations in the Arctic Ocean

[edit] See Also

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