The Bodley Head pre-empts Agarwal’s ‘sweeping’ intersectional history of maps 

The Bodley Head has acquired Mapping Women by Pragya Agarwal, described as “a sweeping intersectional history about maps and map-making".

Stuart Williams, publishing director, pre-empted UK and Commonwealth rights from Richard Pike at C&W Agency. The Bodley Head will publish Mapping Women in hardback and digital formats in spring 2026.

North American rights were acquired by Helen Atsma at Ecco/HarperCollins. German rights were acquired by Penguin/Bertelsmann in a nine-way auction, Italian rights by Rizzoli in a four-way auction and Dutch rights were bought pre-emptively by Ten Have/VBK.

The synopsis reads: “Human beings have tried to map our worlds – and our sense of what the world is – since prehistoric times. Maps have been used to wage wars, divide up land and resources, and claim ownership. But, like all histories, the history of cartography has been overwhelmingly one-sided, composed of maps made by men and that documented the lives of men – especially those who have held power and privilege.

“Mapping Women charts another story. Among many other fascinating and important subjects, it describes the exclusion of women from cartography, decodes modern maps that show inequalities entrenched by boundaries drawn decades earlier, and reveals how health outcomes, political decisions, and safety depend on what cartographers decide to map. But Mapping Women is also about the forgotten or intentionally hidden women who made pioneering maps that helped change the course of science or history – and the inspiring women leading change-making mapping projects today.”

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and geospatial data scientist, a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Geographical Society and the American Association of Geographers, a visiting professor of social inequities at Loughborough, and a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

She has recently been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a British Library Eccles Fellowship and a Churchill Fellowship, all of which will support the researching and writing of Mapping Women. Agarwal is also the author of five previous books, including (M)otherhood (Canongate).

Agarwal said: “This book is a result of more than 15 years of academic research and a life-long obsession with maps. I have wanted to write this book for a very long time, and now as our bodily rights are under threat, this seems more urgent than ever. Bodley Head is a dream publisher and I can’t think of a better home for an ambitious and inter-disciplinary project like this. I am so looking forward to working with Stuart and the rest of the Vintage team."

Williams said: “Pragya’s hugely enjoyable and ground-breaking book shows us different worlds, and a new history. It will restore to the centre of the story people and experiences that have throughout history been literally marginalised.”