John Ogilby

Map The Road From LONDON to the LANDS END from the Britannia road atlas published in 1675 . In his “strip maps”, Ogilby projects the individual street together with all the waypoints onto an imaginary strip of paper and thus retells the course of the journey between the starting point and the end point for the viewer.

John Ogilby (* November 1600 in or near Edinburgh ; † September 4, 1676 in London ) was a Scottish dancer, dance master , impresario , translator of classical epics and fables , poet, bookseller, publisher, as well as royal master of ceremonies , printer and cosmographer .

Ogilby's early career as a dancer ended as early as 1621 when he suffered an accident and was lame on one leg from that point on. Then Ogilby came to Ireland, where the English governor Thomas Wentworth hired him as a dance master and scribe. He founded Dublin's first theater, the Werburgh Street Theater, and from 1638, as Master of the Revels, he was responsible for licensing masked and theatrical performances in Ireland.

After the outbreak of the Civil War in England in 1641, his patron Wentworth was executed on the scaffold and the drama theater in Dublin was closed. Ogilby then returned to England, learned Latin and Greek and translated Virgil , Aesop and Homer into English. With the Aesopicks , a satirical verse telling based on the fables of Aesop and expanded with his own stories, Ogilby criticized the political and social conditions in England.

Ogilby had his works illustrated by artists such as Wenzel Hollar and Francis Cleyn . He gained a reputation through aesthetically elaborate editions, which, among other things, gave him the contract to document the coronation procession of Charles II through the City of London in 1661 in a magnificent volume (The Entertainment of ... Charles II) . As a publisher, Ogilby was one of the pioneers of subscription in English publishing in the 17th century.

In 1671, Ogilby founded his own printing company and focused on the publication of geographical works. The Atlas Britannia published in 1675 became best known . With its specific way of representation, Ogilby's Britannia determined street plans well into the 18th century and is now considered a milestone in the development of street atlases .

life and work

Origin and youth

Ogilby's horoscope, created by Elias Ashmole.

When asked about his place of birth, Ogilby stated in later years that he did not want to disclose it so that - as in the case of Homer  - several places could claim the right to call him their son. It is commonly believed that Ogilby was born in or near Edinburgh . However, according to Katherine Van Eerde, Ogilby's authoritative biographer, the baptismal registers of Edinburgh do not show an Ogilby for the years around 1600.

A horoscope (illustration) created by Ogilby's friend Elias Ashmole contains the information in the middle

Nov. 17, 1600, 4 AM Mr. Jo. Ogilby of Kellemeane, 10 myles north from Dundee

So, according to Ashmole, Ogilby was born in a place called 'Kellemeane' ten miles north of Dundee . While Ogilby's biographer Van Eerde was unable to identify this place, Margret Schuchard assumes that it is the small town of Kirriemuir .

Ogilby spent only a few years of his youth in Scotland . Van Eerde suspects that soon after Jacob VI. of Scotland in 1603 when James I had ascended the English throne, moved to London . In 1606 Ogilby's father became a citizen of London and at the same time became a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company , founded in the 14th century , one of the livery companies of the City of London. According to John Aubrey's short biography in Brief Lives , Ogilby's father wasted his fortune and was imprisoned in King's Bench Prison for debt in 1612 . By winning the lottery, John Ogilby, who was just twelve years old, managed to pay off his father's creditors that same year and thus buy him out of the debt prison.

Dance master

Draft of a costume for a mask play of the Stuart period ( Inigo Jones , early 17th century).

Shortly after his father's release, Ogilby began dance training with John Draper in London's Gray's Inn Lane . Van Eerde suspects that Ogilby's family was in a financially difficult position even after their father's release, and that the young Ogilby therefore decided to train as a dance master .

There is some evidence that Ogilby showed a great talent for dancing. He completed his apprenticeship in five years and thus in less time than the required seven. Then he founded his own dance school. Soon afterwards the Duke of Buckingham noticed him and hired him for a mask play in honor of Jacob I.

The Duke of Buckingham was known for hosting sumptuous masquerades. The text for the performance in 1621 was commissioned by Buckingham from the playwright Ben Jonson , whom James I had valued as a mask play writer for years. The play was The transformed Gypsy (Engl. The Gypsies metamorphosed ) on Buckingham's festive made-up country estate Burley-on-the-Hill. Buckingham and his courtiers slipped into the roles of gypsies, reading from the hand of the spectators of the court and finally predicting a flattering future for the aging king. He was enthusiastic and asked to see the piece twice more. At one of these performances, John Ogilby's dance career came to an abrupt end. He suffered a ligament or cartilage injury in his knee and was paralyzed on one leg for the rest of his life.

Even after his accident, Ogilby remained loyal to dancing, albeit in a different role: in the 1620s and 30s he worked as a dance teacher at the country gentleman Robert Hopton's estate in Witham, Somerset , and established other relationships with people at court. Presumably with the help of these connections he got a job with Sir Thomas Wentworth in 1633 . A month after Wentworth was appointed Governor of Ireland by the King, Ogilby followed him to Dublin , teaching Wentworth's children and Wentworth's young and socially inexperienced wife.

Acting director

As governor of Ireland, Wentworth not only took care of the administration of the country, he also created his own court on the model of the royal court in London. One of them included a theater, and so Ogilby was given the authority to build Ireland's first theater.

The Werburgh Street Theater was built in close proximity to Dublin Castle under Ogilby's supervision . The biggest challenge here was to attract good actors and musicians to distant Dublin. Ogilby was helped by chance: Due to a serious epidemic, all London theaters had to close between May 1636 and October 1637, and so Ogilby, who had excellent connections with the theater world in London, was able to hire numerous renowned artists for his theater in Dublin.

Some of the plays performed during this period were penned by well-known playwrights such as Thomas Middleton , John Fletcher and Ben Jonson . James Shirley was the chief dramaturge of the Werburgh Street theater . Shirley re-performed a number of his older plays and wrote at least three new ones during his time in Dublin ( Rosania , The Royal Master and St. Patrick for Ireland ), which premiered at the Werburgh Street Theater. With The Merchant of Dublin , Ogilby also wrote a new piece that was performed but never printed.

In 1638 Wentworth appointed Ogilby Master of the Revels for Ireland; as such, Ogilby was responsible for issuing licenses for masked plays and theatrical performances. Without these licenses, no form of public entertainment was allowed, and the royalties flowed into Ogilby's pockets.

Translator and poet

In 1641, Ogilby's rise came to an abrupt end. In May, his benefactor Wentworth was executed after a brief trial for high treason in the Tower of London . Only a few months later, the Irish Catholic uprising broke out in Dublin and Ireland fell into civil war. Ogilby's Werburgh Street Theater became a stables for the city militia during the chaos of the war.

Sometime in the 1640s, Ogilby left Ireland and returned to England. First he went to Cambridge , where he took Latin and Greek lessons at his friend James Shirley's school. His stay in London is documented for 1648. It is not known how he initially earned his living there.

In March 1650 he married Christian Hunsdon, the wealthy widow of Thomas Hunsdon, a member of the London Merchant Taylors' Company . Christian Hunsdon was probably only a few years younger than her fifty-year-old husband at the time. She had three children from her first marriage, and it is widely believed that she brought a fortune to the marriage that Ogilby, who had just fled Ireland, desperately needed for his work as a translator and writer.

Virgil

First page of Ogilby's translation of the Aeneid , with a decorative strip and initial by Wenceslaus Hollar . On the right, Ogilby's comment.

Ogilby's work as a translator began even before his marriage. In 1649 John Crook published an edition of the works of the Roman poet Virgil . Crook was also James Shirley's publisher, and it is likely that Ogilby and Crook knew each other from their time together in Ireland.

Virgil's works had been translated into English several times , beginning with William Caxton's translation in the late 15th century. While his predecessors dealt with the text quite freely, Ogilby aimed at a literal translation as possible. His goal was to dress Virgil's "Roman muse in native English wool".

Ogilby's 1649 Vergil edition is provided with a detailed commentary. Ogilby wrote three quarters of this commentary from the Latin Virgil Commentary by the Spanish Jesuit and humanist Juan Luis de la Cerda (Commentaria in omnia opera Publii Virgilii Maronis) . This approach was by no means unusual at the time - the better arguments were supported by illustrious authorities, the greater the credibility.

Van Eerde rates Ogilby's text as “straightforward” and his meter made up of iambic five-sided cues as “passable”. Ogilby's rhymes, Van Eerde continues, are generally sounding, even if they sometimes fail. The influential English playwright John Dryden , who got a Virgil edition himself in 1697, puts Ogilby on a par with Thomas Heywood and James Shirley and in his satirical work Mac Flecknoe makes fun of the poetic abilities of his predecessors.

Aesop

Illustration by the Bohemian engraver Wenceslaus Hollar for Ogilby's work Aesop's Fables Paraphras'd . Here is an etching for the fable Of the Court Mouse, and Country Mouse from the 1665 edition.

Next, Ogilby turned to the fables of the Greek poet Aesop . In 1651 he published a retelling of the famous animal fables in his own verse under the title Aesop's Fables Paraphras'd . John Crooke's brother Andrew printed the book in four parts, individually numbered but bound together.

In his foreword, Ogilby justified the work on the work with the extremely positive response to his Virgil edition. At the same time, he apologizes for the descent from the heights of Virgilian poetry into the depths of humor with the poor translations of his predecessors. However, Ogilby could not have his own insights into the quality of earlier translations, because at the time of publication he was not yet able to speak the Greek language. This comes from a horoscope by his friend Ashmole, who tried to determine in December 1653 when the best time was for Ogilby to begin his Greek studies. Presumably Ogilby used a Latin version for the translation or that of his predecessors; The only thing that is certain is that he wrote the constitution himself.

A particularly outstanding feature of Ogilby's Aesop edition are its illustrations. Until the end of his life, Ogilby was extremely interested in the visual elements of bookmaking. This was particularly evident in the choice of artists for the illustration of his works. He preferred to work with the London-based copper engraver Wenzel Hollar , whose work is valued to this day due to its attention to detail and careful execution.

Homer

Portrait of John Ogilby from the 1660 edition of Homer's Iliad .

The translation of Aesop's fables was followed in 1660 by a translation of Homer's verse epic Iliad into English, which he followed in 1665 by Homer's second epic, the Odyssey . As the main source, Ogilby used the bilingual Homer edition in Greek and Latin published by the French humanist Jean de Sponde from 1583. This was also used by Ogilby's predecessor George Chapman , who was the first to publish a complete translation of Homer's works into English.

Margaret Schuchard, one of Ogilby's biographers, rates his Homer translation as follows:

Between the great peaks of the Homer transmission, Chapman and Pope, Ogilby's version looks quite modest, not as gorgeous as Chapman and not as differentiated as Pope, a little clumsy, rhythmically faltering, without the staying power of the arc of tension and yet meritorious in detail.

What was particularly valued by contemporaries about Ogilby's Homer edition was apparently the rich commentary, which was entirely shaped by the spirit of learning of the 17th century. Thomas Hobbes , who was the next to venture to translate Homer, decided not to add a comment to his own translation of 1676 in view of Ogilby's achievement and answered the question about the reasons for this himself: “But why without Annotations? Because I had no hope to do it better than it is already done by Mr. Ogilby. "(German:" But why without comments? Because I had no hope to do it better than Mr. Ogilby has already done. " )

Aesopicks

Royal Swan and Republican Stork . Illustration by Wenceslaus Hollar for Ogilby's Aesopicks . The animals in the picture are dressed in the style of the Stuart Restoration , which underscores Ogilby's reference to current political events.

Ogilby's later work Africa precedes him with a brief outline of his life. Regarding his change from translator to poet, he notes:

Then, being restless, though weary of tedious Versions, and such long Journeys in Translating Greek and Latin Poets, Works asking no less than a Mans whole life to accomplish, I betook myself to Aesop , where I found such Success, that soon I seem 'd to tread Air, and walk alone, becoming also a Mythologist, not onely Paraphrasing, but a Designer of my own Fables [...]

Then, restless but exhausted from laborious drafts and such long journeys in the translation of Greek and Latin poets, works that require no less than a man's life to complete, I resorted to Aesop , finding such success that I soon seemed to be walking on clouds and advancing on my own two feet, becoming a myth-teller, not only paraphrasing, but as the creator of my own fables.

It was the Aesopicks , first printed in 1668 , with which Ogilby became the "creator of his own fables". Three quarters of the material dealt with in the Aesopicks follows the tradition by Aesop , a quarter comes from Ogilby himself.

Topics such as breach of trust, attempts at deception, injustice and opportunism are taken up. And as was common at the time, Ogilby didn’t skimp on allusions to contemporary events. In this way he dealt with the horrors of the English civil war, the execution of the king and the time of the Restoration in a humorous way . His biographer Schuchard judges that Ogilby ran this enterprise "clearly for his own pleasure", and that his readers apparently shared this pleasure too. Not least because of the attractive illustrations - again contributed by Wenceslaus Hollar - the book was a resounding success with the public.

Publisher and printer

John Ogilby's career as a publisher and printer was gradual. The first editions of his Virgil and Aesop transmissions were published by John and Andrew Crook, both of whom were known for the poor quality of their printed works. His edition of Virgil's works, printed in 1654, was already a splendid volume, of which Ogilby wrote jubilantly that it was "the most beautiful that English printing can boast of so far". Ogilby had financed the printing of the lavish Virgil edition with a method that was hardly known until then, the subscription . To illustrate the work, he had one hundred full-page copperplate engravings made based on designs by the renowned painter Francis Cleyn . Subscribers could then have each individual engraving marked with their name, rank and coat of arms on the lower edge of the picture for a fee and thus demonstrate their love of art on display. In this way, Ogilby could not only pay for the high manufacturing costs, but also satisfy the vanity of his subscribers. Financing publishing projects through subscription was still new and little tried at the time - alongside the London publisher Richard Blome , Ogilby was one of the pioneers of subscription in the English publishing business of the 17th century.

Ogilby was evidently so successful in producing high-quality printed matter that in his further work he always attached great importance to first-class paper quality, generous type areas, clean fonts and excellent illustrations. From 1658 he worked with the London printer Thomas Roycroft , who "understood and shared" Ogilby's intention to make beautiful books - according to Schuchard. Probably through Roycroft, Ogilby found out about the Brian Waltons company , which between 1655 and 1657 was the very first in England to have a multilingual Bible printed. Inspired by Walton, Ogilby also came up with the plan for a multilingual Bible edition, but not in the ancient languages ​​such as Hebrew, Latin and Greek, but in the modern European languages. Ogilby never carried out this plan for unexplained reasons, and so the project of a polyglot Bible in modern languages ​​was not realized until 1711/12 in Schiffbek and Wandsbek near Hamburg ( Biblia pentapla ) . Instead, in 1660, Ogilby printed a luxuriously furnished Bible in English with copperplate engravings from Nicolaes Visscher's workshop . With this project he hit the nerve of the times, because the return of Charles II was already becoming apparent during the preparatory work, and with him the reintroduction of the Anglican Church in England.

Royal favor

The Entertainment of… Charles II , here the title page of the second edition from 1662.

Ogilby's biographer Van Eerde speculates that it was a copy of Ogilby's Bible on which Charles II swore the coronation oath after his return. And Schuchard gives an anecdote according to which Ogilby presented the king with a copy of his Bible printed entirely on parchment at Whitehall Castle . What is certain, however, is that from the beginning of the Stuart Restoration , Ogilby was particularly favored by the king and his reputation as a poet and publisher gave him the contract to help shape the coronation procession of Charles II and to record it in a printed work for later generations.

A festival committee consisting of citizens and councilors of the City of London gave Ogilby the task of writing the speeches, songs and inscriptions on the triumphal arches for the festival procession that took place on April 23, 1661. For Ogilby this meant a special honor, because the renowned poets Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker were entrusted with this task at the last parade in honor of Jacob I in 1604 .

Ogilby opted for four triumphal arches, where the train stopped and the king was honored with speeches, songs and smaller performances. As themes, Ogilby chose the rebellion, conquered by the monarchy and allegiance, the sea power of England, the return of unity and finally the impending prosperity. Quotations from Virgil and Horace were affixed to the arches , as well as the motto 'SPQL' already used by Ben Jonson in 1604, a modification of the well-known " Senatus Populusque Romanus ", in which "Londinensis" took the place of "Romanus" .

As wages for his work, Ogilby received a total of 100 pounds sterling - but no less important was the exclusive right to print the description of the pageant. This appeared in 1661 and 1662. Both editions of The Entertainment of… Charles II describe the course of the coronation procession in great detail. It records where Charles II stopped, what was said, sung and performed and who was involved. In the 1662 edition, Ogilby also provided numerous explanations with references to ancient writers he used, as well as a five double-page representation of Wenceslaus Hollar's parade .

Both volumes achieved great sales success. The second print of the 1661 edition was in progress a short time after the first had been produced. And the sale of the opulently furnished edition from 1662 was so easy that Ogilby was able to turn to new goals while it was being sold.

Second theater company and big brand

In the summer of 1662 Ogilby returned to Ireland. Renewed with the title Master of the Revels in Ireland , he set about looking for a suitable place for a new theater in Dublin and found it on Smock Alley, north of Dublin Castle . Ogilby's playhouse in Smock Alley was not only larger in size than William Davenant's London theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but with its moving scenery it also stood out technically from the theaters in England's capital. With performances of plays by Ben Jonson , William Shakespeare and Pierre Corneilles , it quickly became a center of social and cultural activities in Dublin.

Apart from that, only a few facts have come down to us about Ogilby's time in Ireland. Apparently he returned to London several times during these years and never moved to Ireland. What is certain is that Ogilby turned his back on his theater company in Dublin in 1665 at the latest and thus finally said goodbye to the world of theater.

A year after his return to London, Ogilby suffered a severe blow. The Great Fire of London in September 1666 reduced four fifths of the city to rubble and ashes within a few days. Ogilby's house burned and with it all of his bookstore. The manuscript of his twelve-book epic Carolies , a biography of Charles I , also fell victim to the flames. Only the valuable copper plates to illustrate his work were saved by friends. In this way, Ogilby was able to reprint all of his books - with the exception of the Bible and the report from the coronation pageant - and managed a fresh start at the age of 65.

geographer

Cosmography

Charles II receives his cosmographer Ogilby in audience. Detail from Morgan's map of London (1682). The excerpt shows a scene in which Ogilby asked the king for financial support for the printing of his Cosmography .

The Great Fire of London not only destroyed large parts of Ogilby's past, it also created space for a new project that would occupy him for the last decade of his life. In May 1669, Ogilby announced to his subscribers a description of the world (cosmography) in English. A total of five volumes were planned: one each for the continents Africa, America, Asia and Europe and one for Great Britain. The volume on Europe was never printed and - as far as is known - never started. However, in the last phase of his life, Ogilby published three books on China (1669, 1671 and 1673) and one on Japan (1670) in addition to the volumes planned in Cosmography , four other geographical works.

Ogilby's geographical works are sometimes referred to as ' atlases ' today, but have little in common with the map collections so called today. Rather, they formed a compilation of descriptions of strange countries and customs, all of which Ogilby copied from reports of European travelers and missionaries. To this end, Ogilby obtained the latest works on the area he wanted to cover. He then had it translated and illustrated. While he still paid his own engravers to copy the illustrations from the Amsterdam original edition for his first China report, he later worked directly with the engraver and publisher Jacob van Meurs in Amsterdam . Van Meurs supplied Ogilby with images, which he either had his own printing house made, or whose printing plates - if small-format illustrations were concerned - he sent Ogilby. After use, Ogilby sent the plates back to Amsterdam so that van Meurs could use them for other works. Ogilby had other illustrations, including maps, created by Wenceslaus Hollar, with whom he had previously worked successfully.

The authors Ogilby used for his 'Atlases' included the Dutch globetrotter Joan Nieuhof , the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher , the Dutch theologian and historian Arnoldus Montanus, and the now largely forgotten Dutch doctor and geographer Oliver Dapper . Whenever possible, Ogilby preferred the more recent reports from the Dutch to those of other travelers; if he did not find any Dutch texts, he resorted to editions by Spanish or Portuguese authors.

As with previous projects, Ogilby focused entirely on quality from a technical point of view. All volumes appeared as large format folios , printed on fine paper and provided with a plurality of pictures.

Britannia

Title copper from Ogilby's Britannia from 1675. The measurement method used for the volume is documented in the lower right third of the sheet: two men pace the streets of the English Kingdom with a measuring wheel and thus provide the data basis for Ogilby's maps.

Unlike Ogilby's earlier geographical works, Britannia… a Geographical and Historical Description of the Principal Roads Thereof, first published in 1675, is an atlas in the modern sense. And for the Britannia , Ogilby did not fall back on the preparatory work of previous authors, but evaluated data that had to be collected over the years.

From 1672 he met with members of the Royal Society to discuss his plan for a "geographical and historical description of the main roads in Britain". Ogilby's circle included scholars such as Christopher Wren , Robert Hooke , Jonathan Goddard , John Aubrey , John Hoskins, and Richard Shortgrave . The men met regularly and in different compositions in one of the London coffee houses, where they discussed the reconstruction of London, the best surveying methods for Ogilby's maps and suitable methods of information gathering. Together they designed a detailed questionnaire that was printed by Ogilby and given to his data collection officer. They then traveled to different parts of England, noted their topographical observations, filled out the questionnaires and pushed a surveying wheel across the streets to determine the exact distances.

Meanwhile, Ogilby was soliciting subscribers for his project. He had since given up his original plan to publish only one volume. In 1674 he promised the reading public a six-volume edition. But despite the fact that the king had in the meantime appointed him 'Royal Cosmographer' , he was unable to find enough interested parties for the ambitious and financially expensive project. So he finally made cuts of necessity and announced a three-volume edition: a street atlas, a volume with descriptions and maps of the twenty-five cathedral cities and a topographical description of the entire kingdom.

During Ogilby's lifetime only the street atlas appeared. This contains a hundred double-sided stripe maps on which the most important postal routes of the kingdom are recorded. A compass rose on the edge of each strip is used to orient the viewer. In contrast to many of its predecessors, Ogilby consistently replaced the old mile , short mile and middle mile, which was confusing for travelers , with the statute mile, which was introduced in 1592, with a length of 1,760 yards .

Even before the atlas appeared, Ogilby drew up his will. It is dated February 27, 1675 and appoints four men as administrators who - so Van Eerde suspects - were among his closest friends. All of his property went to his wife Christian and her grandson and Ogilby's successor, William Morgan. It was Morgan who Ogilby asked to continue the Britannia project.

Map The Continuation of the Road from LONDON to Holyhead from Britannia .

Britannia appeared in print six months after the will was drawn up . In addition to the strip maps, the large folio volume contained brief descriptions of the most important English cities. With its scope, its elaborate form of data collection and the original way of displaying it, it set new standards in the production of street atlases in Great Britain. Completely different from the earlier volumes of Cosmography, with their imaginative descriptions of foreign countries and their sometimes bizarre illustrations, it contained fact-based and useful information for travelers. The fact that today many of the strip maps contained in the Britannia , removed from the complete works, have survived in various collections, indicates the fact that many owners of the large-format Britannia actually used them in everyday travel. With its specific way of representation, Ogilby's Britannia determined street plans well into the 18th century and is now considered a milestone in the development of street atlases.

On September 4, 1676, Ogilby died very old in London and was buried the next day in the vault of St Bride's Church, designed by his friend Christopher Wren . His grave was completely destroyed in the bombing of the German Air Force in 1940.

Works

• Virgil's Works (1649, 1651, 1654, lat.opera 1658)
• Aesop's Fables Paraphras'd (1651, 1665, 1668)
• Homer His Iliads (1660)
• The Entertainment of… Charles II (1661, 1662)
• Androcleus or The Roman Slave (1665)
• The Ephesian Matron (1665)
• Homer His Odyssey (1665)
• Works of Virgil (1666, 1675)
• Aesopicks (1668, 1673, 1675)
• Embassy to China (1669, 1673)
• Africa (1670)
• Atlas Japannensis (1670)
• America (1671)
• Atlas Chinensis (1671)
• Asia (1673)
• Britannia (1675, 1676)
• Itinerarium angliae (1675, 1676)

literature

Tools

• Margret Schuchard: A descriptive bibliography of the works of John Ogilby and William Morgan , Bern [u. a.] 1975, ISBN 3-261-01562-4 .

swell

Ogilby's life can be traced mainly from two sources: Ogilby's preface to Africa (1670) and John Aubrey's notes on Ogilby's life:

• John Aubrey: Brief Lives , ed. by Andrew Clark, 2 volumes, Oxford 1898, volume 2, pp. 99-105.
• John Aubrey: Letters by Eminent Men and Lives of Eminent Men , 3 volumes, 1813, Volume 3, pp. 466-470.

In addition, Ogilby left four business letters.

Representations

• Katherine S. Van Eerde: John Ogilby and the Taste of His Times , Folkestone 1976, ISBN 0-7129-0690-8 (Carefully researched biography. Particularly noteworthy are the detailed descriptions of Ogilby's works).
• Margret Schuchard: John Ogilby: 1600–1676. Life picture of a gentleman with many careers , Hamburg 1973 (bibliophilically designed edition; more of a narrative character and written for a wider audience).
• Marion Eames: John Ogilby and his Aesop: The Fortunes and Fables of a Seventeenth-Century Virtuoso , in: Bulletin of the New York Public Library 65 (1961), pp. 73-88.
• Sarah LC Clapp: The Subscription Enterprises of John Ogilby and Richard Blome , in: Modern Philology 30, 4 (1933), pp. 365-379.

Web links

Commons : John Ogilby  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Publications by and about John Ogilby in VD 17 .

Remarks

1. ↑ MS. Aubrey 8, fol. 46, cited in Clark, Brief Lives , Volume 2, pp. 99-105. See also Van Eerde: John Ogilby , p. 15.
2. ^ Van Eerde: John Ogilby , p. 15.
3. ^ Van Eerde: John Ogilby , p. 15.
4. ↑ Bodleian Library, Oxford: Ashmolean 332, f. 35v. A second horoscope is dated December 20, 1653. Katherine Van Eerde assumes that both horoscopes were created at the same time. Van Eerde, John Ogilby , footnote 2 to Chapter 1, p. 153.
5. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 15.
6. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 16.
7. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 16.
8. ↑ Merchant Taylor's Guild Records , IV, 1595-1607, f. 246r. On this, Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 16 and Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 17f.
9. ↑ Notes on John Ogilby can be found in Aubrey's Brief Lives , Volume 2, pp. 99-105, and his Letters by Eminent Men and Lives of Eminent Men , Volume 3, pp. 466-470. Regarding the source value, it should be noted that Aubrey gives some facts incorrectly and contradictingly.
10. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 17.
11. ↑ See Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 16f.
12. ↑ See Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 22 and Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 22.
13. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 23.
14. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 31.
15. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 33, assumes that Ogilby returned to London in the summer of 1647. According to Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 27, the exact year of his return is not known.
16. ↑ The information on Ogilby's foreign language skills differ: Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 16 assumes - following Aubrey - that Ogilby already had language skills in Latin at a young age and then brushed them up in later years; Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 36, states that Ogilby did not begin to learn Latin until he was at the theater in Dublin. Both agree that Ogilby first learned Greek in the 1640s.
17. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 27.
18. ↑ Schuchard gives February 1651 as the marriage date. Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 27, was able to use the baptism, marriage and death registers of the Parish St. Peter-le-Poor to prove that it was actually March 14, 1649 [1650 according to the Gregorian calendar ].
19. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 33, incorrectly reproduces the first name of Ogilby's wife as 'Christiana'. The name 'Christian' was so unusual that she is listed as 'Catherine' in a later will of Ogilby. Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 28, suggests that her family was Puritan .
20. ↑ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 28 and Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 33.
21. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 29.
22. ↑ Quoted here from Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 36.
23. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 38.
24. ^ "His [Ogilbys] translation is a straightforward one, in acceptable iambic pentameter". Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 30.
25. ^ "His rhymes are generally sound, although they fail at times". Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 30.
26. ↑ More detailed information on this and the following can be found in Marion Eames: John Ogilby and his Aesop: The Fortunes and Fables of a Seventeenth-Century Virtuoso , in: Bulletin of the New York Public Library 65 (1961), pp. 73-88.
27. ↑ See Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 31.
28. ↑ See Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 31.
29. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 40.
30. ↑ Quoted here from Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 43.
31. ↑ Quoted here from Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 34f.
32. ↑ See Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 44.
33. ↑ See Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 44.
34. ^ So Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 46.
35. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 29.
36. ↑ "the fairest did till then the English press ever boasted," from the preface to Africa , quoted here from Clapp, Subscription Enterprises of John Ogilby and Richard Blome , S. 366th
37. ↑ For more information on this, Clapp, Subscription Enterprises of John Ogilby and Richard Blome , passim.
38. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 49.
39. ↑ For more information, see Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 53.
40. ↑ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , pp. 44f.
41. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , pp. 56f.
42. ↑ On the texts written by Ogilby cf. the detailed descriptions Van Eerdes, John Ogilby , pp. 52-59.
43. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 57.
44. ^ So Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 49.
45. ↑ For the individual prints cf. Van Eerde, John Ogilby , pp. 61f.
46. ↑ On this, Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 67.
47. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 69.
48. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 95.
49. ↑ On this and the following cf. Van Eerde, John Ogilby , “The Great Atlases” chapter, 95–122.
50. ↑ Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 79.
51. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 137.
52. ↑ “… carry on my undertaking of the Kings Britannia”, quoted here from Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 137.
53. ^ Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 137.
54. ↑ See Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 137.
55. ↑ On the lasting effects of Britannia up to the 18th century, cf. Schuchard, John Ogilby , p. 94 and Van Eerde, John Ogilby , p. 151.

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on December 8, 2010 in this version .