Journal of Historical Geography, 18, 2 (1992) 216212

Obituary

J. B . Harley, 1932-1991

Such distinguished scholars as Brian Harley are a rare breed. They may seem to spring, god-like, from the head of Zeus yet are nurtured by their times, upbringing and their academic and personal environments. None more so than Brian Harley whose sudden death in Milwaukee on 20th December 1991 is a sad loss to scholars throughout the world. Born in Bristol on 24th July 1932, he was raised in the West Midlands by foster parents. From a home in which, one suspects, his talents were not fully understood, a generation on from Richard Hoggart he was the classic “scholarship boy”. Having won a place at Brewood

J. B. HARLEY at a conference in Cambridge, July 1979

0305-7488/92/030210 + 03 $03.00/O 210 0 1992 Academic Press Limited

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Grammar School, Wolverhampton, his talent and perseverance gained him a place to read geography at his local University of Birmingham which he took up in 1952 after a broadening experience, socially and geographically, as a ranker in the army (Brian was not one with ‘officer-like qualities’ in his make-up!). In a department with strong historical interests his enthusiasm for the landscape history of the West Midlands was kindled by Harry Thorpe and, having won the W . A. Cadbury prize for his dissertation, he went on to postgraduate studies with Thorpe. His Ph.D. research on the 1279 Hundred Rolls for Warwick&ire produced an early, but still definitive article in The Economic History Review (Vol. 11 (1958), pp. 8-18). His academic career was already launched.

A brief interlude in teaching followed though his Postgraduate Certificate of Education course was surely only an insurance policy in what was then an uncertain academic market, and he was actually working out his notice in a secondary school as he was preparing to take up a lecturing appointment at the University of Liverpool in 1958. Appointed to teach general courses, he quickly came to play an important role in teaching the historical geography of the British Isles in a department with a long-standing reputation for such studies and was encouraged by Robert Steel, an unusually liberal head of department, to teach and research in medieval studies. But it was the cartography and geography of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century that increasingly dominated his work. His innovative studies of English county mapmakers grew out of a suggestion from Rodney Hilton, the Birmingham economic historian, (like Harley, an academic nonconformist), and studies of Christopher Greenwood, county mapmaker (1962) and of the county maps of Lancashire by W illiam Yates and (in association with Paul Laxton) of Cheshire by Peter Burdett-the latter two for the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire-were landmarks in their scrupulous dissection of the map evidence but also for their appraisal of the emphases and distortions that arose from the cartographic and commercial constraints on both mapmakers and publishers of the period. This concept of the map as text, with its ideology and iconography to be ignored at the interpreter’s peril, was to become central to much of his thinking in his mature work.

In 1969 Harley left Liverpool for a brief foray into publishing as a sponsoring editor for David and Charles of Newton Abbot. In his brief time with them not only did he persuade many academics to write on a variety of geographical topics but he established a long-running series of historical geographies that carry his name along with his friend Alan Baker’s in the lists of the Cambridge University Press. As a publisher his persuasive but firm style surprised those who were unaware of his discipline and organization in academic matters. This brief interlude also provided a lasting legacy to map-lovers and collectors in his reprints of the First Edition of the One-Inch Ordnance Survey map series. W ritten in association with Alan Hodgkiss, the Chief Cartographer at Liverpool University, these are still in print and the trenchant notes and skilful editing were to be a foretaste of his impressive contributions to the history of the Ordnance Survey (1980) and the splendidly practical Ordnance Survey Maps: a descriptive manual (1975).

Harley’s return to university life in 1970. as a lecturer at Exeter heralded a remarkable outburst of creative activity (and an early elevation to the Monte- fiore Readership in 1972) which increasingly involved not only his Ordnance Survey work but also growing contributions to and contacts with North American cartography, originally stimulated by his work on mapping during the

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Revolutionary Wars. A frequent visitor to the USA, he undoubtedly found the more open-ended approach to research and the opportunities for operating on the increasingly broader canvas of the differing cartographic traditions and conventions of mapmakers and users throughout the world a great stimulus and attraction. In the late 1970s in association with David Woodward of the University of W isconsin at Madison, he conceived and with true entrepreneurial flair persuaded the University of Chicago Press and the Newberry Institute in Chicago to back what became the six-volume History of Cartography. It was only a matter of time before, in 1987, he was finally tempted to accept a post as Professor of Geography at the Milwaukee campus of the University of W iscon- sin and Director of the American Geographical Society’s office for map history at a time of deep personal unhappiness and of increasing dissatisfaction with the conservatism and inflexibility of British universities that the earned D. Litt. of his alma mater in 1985 only temporarily assuaged.

Harley had already begun to publish profusely on cartographic concepts: on the map as artefact; as record; as symbol; as icon; and as language. Employing the ideas of semiotics, he brought a new and sharper cutting edge to the dissection of maps that marked a fresh and innovative approach to cartographic analysis. Later, as in his controversial book on Maps and the Columbian Encounter (1991), he was to show that the silences as well as the things recorded on the map speak eloquently of both .the sins and the achievements of past cultures. That was surely the radical, the champion of the underdog speaking from a maturity that remembered the experience of his youth. It was also testimony to the qualities of egalitarianism and openmindedness in academic affairs that often irritated the academic establishment, though it attracted many friends and younger colleagues. He could be over-boisterous, and not a little larger than life, not least in the conference bar or the local pub, but his gregariousness and friendliness made him a good, often vastly entertaining companion. Beneath that veneer there lay a somewhat uncertain, shy and sensitive man who could be introspective and difficult for those around him. Despite the many qualities of the public figure, as a teacher and organizer, it was in the study and the library that he was most at home. Three days after his death his Christmas card arrived: poignantly, it spoke of his bliss in a whole floor in his new house in Milwaukee devoted to study space; of his plans for more creative activities once the second volume of the History was edited; and of his hopes for a settled personal life in the USA. There was so much to come! Yet we must be grateful for the substantial published legacy; for the many new insights that others will develop.

What Brian Harley’s many friends will miss most is the man himself: witty and companiable; passionate about those things that he held dear; loyal and constant, if occasionally erratic. He was a proud and devoted father. To his three daughters Karen, Claire and Sarah, who did much to sustain him through the dark days of the early death of his wife Amy in 1983 and, within months, the tragically fatal accident to his son John, historical geographers in many lands send their sympathy as they pay tribute to a distinguished scholar and a lovable man.

Marton, North Yorkshire, York Y06 6RD

RICHARD LAWTON