The Nine Lives of #John_Ogilby review – a cunning cartographer | Books | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/28/nine-lives-john-ogilby-alan-ereira-review
John Ogilby’s greatest legacy is his Britannia, the first road map of England and Wales, published in 1675-76 just before he died. The antiquary John Aubrey was one of the people Ogilby engaged to help compile Britannia, but from the start Aubrey was wary of the royal cosmographer, whom he thought to be “a cunning Scott”. Aubrey spent months researching the county of Surrey, only for Ogilby to announce he would neither pay him for his work nor include it in the printed volume. Disappointed and out of pocket, Aubrey nevertheless preserved biographical notes on Ogilby that serve as hints or clues to one of the 17th century’s most mysterious lives.
Aubrey recorded that Ogilby had “such an excellent inventive and prudential wit” that when he was undone by misfortune “he could shift handsomely” and reinvent himself. The title of Alan Ereira’s new biography builds on Aubrey’s suggestion that Ogilby had an exceptional cat-like capacity for survival. Ereira became interested in the cartographer when writing and producing Terry Jones’s The Great Map Mystery for the BBC. He approaches Ogilby’s life as a series of riddles.