When I was a little girl, my friend Alison and I created imaginary worlds.
One of these was the land we named “Coneland”. We wrote stories about the royal family of this land; at the bottom righthand corner of the map is the palace and the royal park, situated of course in the capital city, Coneington.
Alison is now a gifted textile artist who regularly exhibits her work in London and throughout the UK. Early expressions of her creative imagination may be seen in the worlds we designed before the age of 10.
Among the most famous examples of imaginary childhood worlds is that composed by the Bronte sisters, “Gondal”. Emily and Charlotte and their siblings actively worked on the complicated fantasy world of “Gondal” for 16 years, and some of their creations at this time may be seen in the Bronte Museum at Howarth in Yorkshire.
Of course, the artist Grayson Perry is well known for his childhood teddy bear Alan Measles, who was “the dictator and god of the imaginary world” in which Grayson Perry dwelt throughout his childhood (and of course well into his adulthood!)
In 1979 an author called Robert Silvey wrote a letter to “The Author”, a journal published by the Society of Authors, in which he invited contact from anyone who had created imaginary worlds in their childhood. He was gathering material for a book which was to be An Enquiry into the Imaginative Worlds of Childhood.
Alison and I sent off copies of our material; pictures and maps, a description of our imaginary world, the land of “Coneland” and its inhabitants.
This is an extract from Robert Silvey’s reply:
“It’s so interesting having two perspectives on this same ‘paracosm‘ (as we call it). The first thing that struck me about the map of Coneland was the similarity of the outline to that of the New Hiniwan States of which I was for some years the President. I suspect that this similarity has something to do with the dimensions of foolscap paper!”
Sadly, Robert Silvey died before completing the book.
But it remains true, as he said in his original letter to “The Author” magazine, that “had it not been for the subsequent fame of the Bronte sisters, no one would ever have heard of Gondal or Angria. Yet they were not the first, not will they be the last, children whose fantasy-life takes the form of an imaginary world.”
Did you ever create imaginary worlds during your childhood? And how has that influenced your adult life and vocation? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
scskillman.com 
How amazing to see that map again after so many years. Sheila and I played together as children and made up stories about this imaginary land and other imagined scenes and situations. There was also some kind of institution for girls called “The Beacons” and we made up stories about the girls who lived there. (this, if I remember rightly was invented after paining ping pong balls with faces and adding hair. The faces seemed to take on their own identity) Then we invented a uniformed organisation called “the Pinkies” which was a reaction to a rather negative experience (in my case anyway) of the Brownies. They would do a “bad” deed everyday as far as I remember. I am sure that these childhood fantasies influenced Sheilas writings and my artwork.
Yes, I remember “the Pinkies” well – what a wonderful reaction to the idea that “good girls” must always be virtuous and compliant!
Wow, that was a very detailed map! What a lovely post. I can remember playing many games where my dolls and action figures inhabited fantasy worlds, but I never drew maps or wrote down anything that I could keep. My worlds were very flimsy, you might say… ; )
Thank you Catherine! It was also a very brightly-coloured map, (thanks to the joy of felt-tip pens), which also made it a good choice for an image to accompany the post. Another thing my friend and I did was to create little dolls out of ping-pong balls and tease out the strands from skeins of embroidery silk and stick them to their heads for hair. These little dolls became the inhabitants of another imaginary world, and, ultimately, my first novel (or “novella”), written in my early teens. One character, I remember, had beautiful red hair and we called her “Tangy”. Even now, I favour heroines who have auburn hair. Juliet, the heroine of “Mystical Circles” has red-gold hair, as does her sister Zoe, who is the main protagonist for my current novel. Thank you again for your comment.