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John Ogilby, Ogelby, or Oglivie (17 November 16004 September 1676) was a Scottish people translator, impresario, publisher and cartographer. He was probably at least a half-brother to James Ogilvy, 1st Earl of Airlie, though neither overtly acknowledged this. Ogilby's most-noted works include translations of the works of Virgil and Homer, and his version of the Fables of Aesop.
Ogilby established Ireland's first theatre in Werburgh Street, Dublin, and following the Restoration, that country's first Theatre Royal. Ogilby played a significant part in arrangements for the coronation of King Charles II. Following the Great Fire of 1666, Ogilby's large-scale map of the City of London was founded on precise survey work, and his Britannia is the first road atlas of England and Wales to be based on surveys and measurements, and drawn to scale.
Ogilby believed himself to be at least a half-brother to James Ogilvy, 1st Earl of Airlie, given at birth to John Ogilby (senior), a gentleman's tailor in Edinburgh, to be adopted. He was most likely educated at the Merchant Taylors' grammar school in London. At eleven years old, Ogilby was indentured as an apprentice to John Draper, one of just three licensed in London. At the time, a dancing master had expertise in "grammar (elocution), rhetoric, logic, philosophy, history, music, mathematics and in other arts": ability to dance in "Old Measures" was considered an essential skill for the upper classes. In 1617, Draper became a barrister at Gray's Inn and released Ogilby, who by then was highly accomplished as a dancer and a teacher, from the apprenticeship, allowing him to set up as a master in his own right and to take part in theatrical performances. A fall while dancing in a masque in February 1619 (aged 18), however, lamed him for life and ended his career as a dancer, though not as a teacher.
In 1650, Ogilby married rich heiress Christian Hunsdon, a widow in her sixties and about 17 years Ogilby's senior. The following year, he published the first edition of his work , which was illustrated by Francis Cleyn. Ogilby's version of the text was very successful, running to five editions in the following 15 years.
During the next few years, Ogilby learnt Greek language with the intention of creating and publishing a new translation of Homer's Iliad; he planned it to be a magnificent undertaking with an estimated production cost of £5,000. The venture required sponsorship to pay for the engraving, each of which would cost about £10, but he secured only 47 sponsors. When the work published in March 1660, it had 600 pages but was substantially less illustrated than Ogilby had planned. With his known Royalist sympathies, Ogilby was a risk to potential patrons who needed to avoid offending the Puritan Commonwealth government.
A year later, Ogilby was again made Master of the Revels in Ireland, and he started building a new theatre in Smock Alley, Dublin. The libretto of Katherine Philips's musical play Pompey, which was performed at Smock Alley in 1663, credits Ogilby as the composer of the tunes. His second sojourn in Ireland was short-lived; in July 1664, he returned to plague-stricken London, leaving his step-son to take his place. In 1665, he published a second, revised edition of The Fables of Aesop, which was this time illustrated with prints by Wenceslaus Hollar.
During the Great Fire of London in 1666, Ogilby's house in Shoe Lane, together with its printing works and most of his stock, was destroyed; he estimated he had lost £3,000. cited in After the Great Fire, the Corporation of London appointed Ogilby and his wife's grandson William Morgan as "sworn viewers", members of a group of four trustworthy gentlemen directed by Robert Hooke, to plot disputed property in the city. Ogilby later made what he called "the most accurate Survey of the City of London and Libertyes therof that has ever been done". (1992). 9780902087323, London Topographical Society. ISBN 9780902087323 cited in By 1668, he had a new house in Whitefriars, and was ready to resume his printing and publishing work.
Ogilby's next major venture was a series of atlases of China, Japan, Africa, Asia and America. The first of these was An Embassy from the East India Company of the United Provinces..., first published in 1669 for Ogilby by John Macock and then reprinted in better quality by Ogilby himself in 1673. This book was substantially a translation of Johan Nieuhof's Dutch publication of the same name with English copies of the Dutch engravings, supplemented by the first English translation of sections of Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata, relating various information from the Jesuit China Mission. Ogilby's Africa appeared in 1670 and was followed in rapid succession by Atlas Japanennsis (1670), America (1671), Atlas Chinensis (1671) and Asia (1673). In 1671, in response to his proposal to make a detailed survey and atlas of Great Britain, the King appointed Ogilby Royal Cosmographer. Thus, at about the age of 70 and with the scientific advice of Robert Hooke, Ogilby began work on Britannia, the project for which he is best known among cartographers.
The cost of the survey and the resulting maps is not known but in a prospectus, Ogilby quotes a preliminary estimate made by the "Lords Referees" – advisors to the Privy Council – as £14,000 (equivalent to about £ million today). Ogilby worked hard to raise this considerable sum by holding lotteries, and with the help of Robert Hooke, who made multiple petitions to the Crown, the Court of Common Council and Court of Aldermen of the Corporation of London and to noble families. Writing in 1925, geographer Sir Herbert Fordham said:
twice only ... has there been such measurement: that of John Ogilby, in 1671-5, and that of John Cary, quite at the end of the following century. In neither case, singularly enough, did the Government take any steps for the publication of the results of the survey, everything being left, in this respect, to private and commercial enterprise.
Whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and John Milton, or John Bunyan and Joseph Addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean.
Other writers were even more critical; Ogilby's entry in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis (about 1800) reads:
The chief merit of his Homer consists in a commendable and uniform fidelity to the sense of his author. As a poet, his pretensions to praise of any kind can scarcely be supported: he has neither animation of thought, accuracy of taste, sensibility of feeling, nor ornament of diction.
Such judgements stuck, and it is only since the mid-20th century that Ogilby's work has again been given scholarly attention, particularly his versions of Aesop's Fables. These, according to a short biography published by Theophilus Cibber in 1753, were "generally confessed to have exceeded whatever hath been done before in that kind". They renewed interest in the fable as a literary medium and arguably initiated suggestions of their adaptation to the troubled politics of the time. (book review)
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