The Wheel of Time

Encyclopedia

The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is a reference book for the bestselling The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series of novels by Robert Jordan. It is published in the United States by Tor Books and in the United Kingdom by Orbit Books. The bulk of the text was written by Teresa Patterson based on notes and information provided by Robert Jordan, with Jordan also serving as overall editor on the project.

The book has been printed in several formats. The original release on 6 November 1997 was a large-format hardback with a predominantly white cover. This led to the book being dubbed 'The Big White Book' by fans. This edition of the book runs to 304 pages. The book was reprinted in a slightly different edition of the same size a year later. This edition has a different cover (a map of the Westlands) and the gallery has been expanded to include the cover of the eighth novel, The Path of Daggers, which was released at the same time. A large-format paperback edition followed in November 1999. On 6 June 2002 Orbit re-released the book as a 461-page mass-market paperback, stripped of all illustrations apart from the maps. This is the 'current' UK edition.


A second edition of the book, updated with information from the later novels, has been mooted several times by fans. However, Robert Jordan has confirmed that instead a new 'Wheel of Time Encyclopedia', written by his wife Harriett McDougal based on his raw notes, will follow on from the main series. This book will feature more maps, a list of every character to appear in the series and a 1,000-word vocabulary for his invented language, the Old Tongue. It will appear after publication of the fourteenth and final novel, A Memory of Light, currently scheduled for Fall 2011.

The book is an attempt to fill in the enormous backstory of the Wheel of Time novels and also serves as 'guidebook' to the world presented in the books. The original large-editions of the book were presented with full-colour art by Todd Cameron Hamilton and includes maps by Ellisa Mitchell, John M. Ford and Thomas Canty. The covers of the novels, painted by Darrell K. Sweet, were also included. The mass-market paperback editions only includes the Mitchell, Ford and Canty maps however. The original artwork by Hamilton was fiercely criticised on release.